


Bringer of Light

by JackMules



Category: Mage: The Awakening, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Chronicles of Darkness, Horror, Mage, Magical Realism, Mystery, RPG, Well actual play -ish, World of Darkness, actual play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 39,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29441418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackMules/pseuds/JackMules
Summary: A group of strangers each receive a mysterious text message telling them to meet at a certain time and place, where they witness something that seems miraculous. Over the next few days, as the events grow increasingly baffling and sinister, they wonder, who is creating them and how?And for what purpose?(Starting in early 2014 and continuing, by fits and starts, to early 2019, I ran a game of Mage the Awakening (starting as 1e, then upgrading to 2e). I wrote the first part of the game up last year. I hope someone out there enjoys it.)(I have previously posted this story in the RPG.net forums as an actual play thread, here: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/mage-the-awakening-2e-bringer-of-light.868202/)
Comments: 5





	1. Meteor

_Early spring, Exeter, UK, 2014_

Oliver arrived early to stand behind a tree a couple of dozen paces from the statue, hoping to catch someone setting up some equipment or concealed cameras. Northernhay Gardens, a small arc of green space and stillness in the middle of the city, was quiet. He saw no-one suspicious; just office workers taking a short cut, glancing in passing at the well-maintained flower beds; gangs of students making their rowdy way from their halls to the city centre, and himself. 

The message had been short and cryptic. He had first assumed that it was meant for someone else, but his phone wouldn’t show him the number that had sent the text, so he couldn’t reply to it. Worded like a command, it read: 

_Come to Northernhay Gardens at 8pm tomorrow evening. Stand next to the statue, facing south._

The manner in which he’d received the message was puzzling too. He’d been on a train that was waiting in the tunnel outside Exeter Central. He’d been reading an article he’d saved on his phone and noted with surprise the symbol for a new message appearing next to the symbol telling him he had no service. He’d put that particular curiosity out of his mind, dismissing it as simply due to a freak, transitory reflection of signal down the tunnel, but it still nagged at him. 

Oliver settled into a comfortable lean against the tree and folded his arms. He had arrived in the park half-expecting to witness a drug deal, but when he got there, he’d realised that the location was far too open for that, especially in the early evening. 

A sudden breeze tugged at his long hair and beard. The sky was beginning to clear, the clouds underlit by orange sodium light dispersing slowly as he watched, revealing the monolithic blackness of the night sky. 

A few minutes before eight, a young man, a little older than Oliver, walked into the gardens and stopped beside the statue, checking his watch. He was tall and thin, with gangly limbs. Oliver approached with a friendly grin, brushing his hair away from his face as it tangled in the wind. 

“Hi.”

“Hi.” The man nodded nervously to him. He wore a grey duffle coat and carried a well-worn canvas satchel, distended with the shape of large books. 

Oliver gestured vaguely at the statue. “Are you here because of the message?”

“Yes! Actually, yes I am.”

“I’m Oliver,” he said, holding out his hand. 

The man shook it enthusiastically. “Sam. Sam Buchanan.”

“Are you a student, Sam?” 

“Yes, post-grad, psychology. Are you a…?”

“A student? No, except ‘of Life’.”

“Well, of course, aren’t we all?” Sam laughed, a little strained. “Um, so what does that consist of, for you?”

“Photography, parkour, serving coffee, you know.”

“Ah yes. Yes.”

As Sam licked his lips in a moment of awkward silence, Oliver looked past him to see another person entering the small park. 

A striking woman with shoulder-length red hair was walking purposefully towards them, half-waving with one hand. She wore a tan trench coat tied at the waist with a belt. She looked a little older than either Oliver or Sam, perhaps in her thirties, Oliver estimated. She walked with an air of breezy confidence. 

“Hi, am I in the right place for the secret message thing?”

Oliver nodded. “Yep, that’s us.” He held out his hand. “I’m Oliver and this is Sam.” 

“Constance. Pleased to meet you.” She smiled radiantly as she shook their hands. 

Sam reflected her smile awkwardly. “Yes, likewise.”

Constance looked around. “Do you know what this is about? Are you the only people here?” 

“No. Yes. So far. I didn’t know whether to expect other people. We won’t have to wait long, though, I think. It’s almost time… is that someone else arriving?”

A short young woman carrying a sports bag over one shoulder walked carefully up to the statue, clutching a phone by her side that illuminated her hand and black trousers in pale light. She wore a dark brown cafe waitress’s apron over a black blouse. Oliver looked her up and down. She was very slim in that way that waiters and waitresses can be, conditioned by constant walking and five-minute lunch breaks. Her straight brown hair hung loose to her shoulders. She regarded the group cautiously from behind large black-rimmed glasses before speaking in a quiet voice. 

“Is this the… because of the message?”

Oliver nodded and smiled welcomingly. “Yes, this is the place. I’m Oliver, this is Constance and Sam.”

She shook the proffered hands timidly. “I’m Isabel. Nice to meet you, Constance and Sam.”

Sam flustered. “Oh, I- we’re not… I mean, we just met-”

Constance laughed. “I like you already, Sam.”

Oliver continued talking to Isabel. “So, do you remember when you got the text?”

“Yeah,” she replied, “it was when I was on the train.”

“To Exeter Central?” 

“Yes, it was odd, I thought you couldn’t get signal in the tunnel.”

Oliver nodded. “Me too. How about you guys?”

Sam furrowed his brow. “I’m not sure, exactly. I don’t remember.”

Constance shrugged. “I’m quite bad at keeping track of my phone.”

Oliver was about to continue talking to Isabel when a man jogged up to them, out of breath and visibly perspiring, His exhalations were tinged with the acrid sweetness of tobacco smoke. He was older than the rest of them, his dark hair and beard flecked with grey. He wore a navy blazer, a pencil nestled in the top pocket. 

“Am I late? Has it started?” he said as he began to catch his breath. 

Constance shook her head. “No, we’re still waiting.”

“Oh good.” His voice carried a gentle Edinburgh burr. “Ach, don’t know why I ran. No idea what this is even for.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. 

“I’m Constance.” Constance extended a hand. 

“Oh right, yes. Irving. Irving MacLeod.”

Oliver smirked and before he could stop himself, asked, “of the Clan MacLeod?” 

Irving wagged his finger as he stuffed his handkerchief back into his trouser pocket. “Ah, there’s one of you in every class, lad.” 

“You’re a teacher?”

Irving sniffed, and nodded. “Chemistry and maths.”

Behind Irving there was a clicking of heels growing louder as a tall woman in a grey suit walked briskly towards them. Her blonde hair was tied back into a tight bun. She carried a cup of coffee in one hand and her blackberry in the other, typing dexterously with one thumb. 

She smiled weakly as everyone introduced themselves and then said her name, “Lucy,” before taking a sip of coffee. 

The park was almost entirely empty now, and the group watched the few remaining travellers with anticipation as they passed. 

“Well,” Oliver said, “maybe this is everyone?”

“Hang on,” said Irving, “this guy looks like he’s approaching.”

A bald, portly man was walking towards them. He wore a brown suit and white shirt, the collar of which he tugged at with a finger as it dug into his neck. He was older than everyone else, perhaps fifty or more. At least, Oliver had never seen anyone younger than that with a leather briefcase. Oliver wondered whether it was more or less expensive than the man’s leather shoes. 

Irving stood with his arms crossed. “So, are you the mysterious messenger?”

The man’s friendly expression was interrupted momentarily by one of surprise. “Er, no. I just got a message to meet here.”

“You too?” Constance exclaimed, “I’m going to have trouble remembering everyone’s names soon.”

Irving hissed through his teeth. “Ach, I’ve already forgotten. I’m useless with names.”

She elbowed him. “Thanks, _Irving._ ”

“Well, my name’s Peter,” said the newcomer. He made sure to shake everyone’s hand as he introduced himself. 

Just as a silence started to settle over the group, everyone’s ringtones chimed. Oliver was first to get his phone out. 

“Hey, everyone got this? ‘At 20:08:21, look towards Algol.’”

Constance looked around. “That’s not long, what could it mean? Who’s Algol?”

“Who, or perhaps what?” said Sam. “Could Algol be the name of a star?”

Oliver started typing. “Searching… Yes. Algol is a star. I’ll download a star map.”

“Less than a minute…” said Peter, “what do you think this could be about, anyway?”

“Viral marketing, I’ll bet,” Oliver said, “don’t know what else it could be. There, got it. Algol is… up there.” Oliver pointed. “Everyone see it?” 

He leaned closer to Isabel so she could follow his outstretched arm. 

“Thanks.” Her cheeks dimpled as she smiled. 

Peter looked at his watch. “Okay, everyone watching? Here we go. Three, two, one...” He looked up. 

In a split second, a streak of light arced across the night sky, terminating in a flash that lit up the whole sky for a brief instant. 

There was a moment of stunned silence. 

Oliver closed his open mouth. “That- that was amazing! A meteor!” he stammered. 

Sam was looking up with a look of puzzled wonder. “Did anyone get a video?”

Oliver clicked his finger in frustration. “No. Damn… should have thought of that.”

Just as conversation began to buzz, seven ringtones sounded. Everyone reached for their phones. 

“Ooh! I’ll read this one,” Constance said excitedly, “listen to this-

‘Wasn’t that _amazing_! For one reason or another, you’re all inquisitive people. That’s a good thing. Over the next few weeks you’ll see some of the secret wonders of places you thought you knew well. Please don’t discuss anything you see with anyone else who isn’t part of your group. If you do, you will not be invited to future events.’”

“Well, I guess this isn’t over,” Oliver said, eyebrows raised. He glanced around at the others inquisitively. “Pub, anyone?”

After a murmur of agreement, the group started to walk together down the sloping gardens towards Queen Street. As the group began to move away, Oliver noticed Irving still looking into the night sky, stroking his beard pensively. 

“You coming, Irving?”

After a moment’s more thought, Irving nodded absently. “Aye…”

*****

Sam helped Peter carry the round of drinks back to the table. The group had ensconced themselves in a cosy corner of The Ship Inn. Sam carefully placed the glasses down on the uneven wooden table. He passed Isabel her glass of wine and slid Oliver’s stout to him across the table with a guiding hand. 

Sam leaned back in his chair, looking around. Oliver had engaged Isabel in deep conversation, listening intently with a ready smile, his dark eyes never moving far from her face. Sam nodded slightly to himself. 

_Something going on there._

Irving coughed behind him, having finished his cigarette before coming inside. He pulled out the chair next to Sam. 

“Mind if I sit here?”

“By all means, please do.”

Irving sat, putting down his whisky with one hand as he awkwardly tucked his chair in underneath him. 

“Well, what a strange night, ‘ey lad?”

Sam nodded. “Yes, strange indeed.”

“I just got off the phone with an old colleague of mine at the university.”

“I see, have you worked there previously?”

“Yeah, research fellow, chemistry department. Before it closed.”

“Oh yes, I remember that. Terrible shame.”

“Aye.”

“You decided to stay in Exeter rather than take a position elsewhere?”

“Aye, well, you could say that. Circumstances, you know, lad?”

“Not really, but I don’t mean to pry. You were saying, about your colleague?”

“Aye, right. Friend of mine in the physics department. He’s got a radio antenna on the roof tracking meteors. I asked him if he’d had anything big tonight - he gets the data straight to his phone, you see. He said he hadn’t.”

“Strange. It looked just like a meteor, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. I asked him if there was any way of predicting meteors, like, to the exact time and place in the sky. He said there wasn’t really. These things are tiny, most of them. Too small to detect until they burn up.”

Isabel looked across at them. “Surely someone else must have seen it. It lit up the whole sky.”

Oliver nodded, joining the conversation. “I’ll check twitter.” He took out his phone and started to scroll through it. 

“Uhh… can’t see anything. Should have trended by now.”

Sam licked his lips. “Well, if it wasn’t a meteor, what was it?”

Irving shook his head. “Don’t know, lad.”


	2. Hidden Words, Pt I

Constance found herself watching the clock in the corner of her screen, as if she could wait for the autopsy report to write itself. She took a sip from her cup, then stuck her tongue out in disgust at the taste of the stone cold coffee. She stood up and walked to the break room to make another. 

Outside the windows, the sky was already darkening. She looked at her watch. Despite staring at a clock for the last few minutes, she hadn’t actually remembered the time. 

_ 18:40. Ugh.  _

She jabbed a button on the coffee machine and took out her phone as it began to grind noisily. 

Her phone’s notification bar was busy with messages. The mystery gang from a few days ago were talking again. 

They’d received a new message. She scrolled through her own, excitedly, until she found it. 

_ You’ve seen, and will continue to see, some remarkable things. Secrecy is unfortunately a necessity. Some formalities: _

_ If you don’t obey a message, then you won’t be included in future messages. _

_ Don’t tell anyone, except others who have received this message, about the messages. _

_ With that out of the way, let’s go and do something impossible.  _

_ Go to the section of the medieval bridge between Frog Street, Edmund Street, Western Way and New Bridge Street at 19:00. _

With a gasp she looked back at her watch. 

_ 18:43. _

She rushed back to her desk, grabbed her bag and ran for the stairs. 

_ I can make it if I run! _

*****

Constance arrived at the open space out of breath. It was the tail end of rush hour and the four roads surrounding the old landlocked bridge were busy with cars. The noise and fumes that hung in the air robbed the old ruin of the wonder it would have had, shrouding it as much in banality as it was in carbon. 

Everyone else was already here. Isabel smiled as Constance approached. 

“Hi Constance,” she said, “we’ve found something already!” 

Irving was bending down next to the wall looking at a packet of chalk that had been placed on the floor. 

At the moment that Constance reached Isabel, their phones chimed with another message. Isabel read it out. 

“‘There’s a hidden message somewhere around here, and it’s vanishing fast! Tip: When you find it, make it small but satisfying.’”

Sam’s brow furrowed. “That’s rather cryptic. Again.”

Irving began searching immediately, walking off through the ankle-length grass. 

Constance caught Isabel’s eye. “Come on, let’s walk around the other side of the bridge.”

“Ok.” Isabel replied. 

Constance led the way underneath an archway, footsteps crunching on the gravel under the bridge. She looked back at Isabel. She seemed a timid girl, barely into her twenties, perhaps. She smiled at her. 

“I just wanted to get to know you a bit better. Oliver’s been monopolising you a bit, I think?” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. 

Isabel blushed. “Yeah. He seems nice.”

“That’s good.”

“Um… so what do you do?”

“Me? Oh I’m a forensic pathologist.”

“Wow, really?”

“It’s really,  _ really _ not as glamorous as it sounds.”

“Yeah, well, it’s more glamorous than what I do.” 

Constance paused, wrongfooted a little by Isabel’s self-deprecation, when something on the wall caught her eye. 

The evening sun was shining almost directly parallel to the line of the wall, causing the uneven stones to cast long shadows diagonally down and across it. The protruding stones on this section of the bridge stuck out  _ just so _ to sculpt the shadows into words. A message. 

_ Make a wish and write it here. _

Constance gasped. “Oh my gosh, everyone, we found it!”

Isabel shouted. “Bring the chalk!”

One by one they all came to stand opposite the words. Irving looked visibly shocked as he realised what he was looking at. He stood as close as he could, inspecting the stones. “That’s… just incredible. I can’t even tell how they’ve done it. There are no abrasions, chisel marks, nothing. The stones look like they’ve been here for five hundred years.”

“Could they have been?” Lucy asked, “I mean, could it just be an old message?”

Sam shook his head. “A medieval person would have used different spelling, almost certainly.”

Oliver stroked his beard. “So the clue makes sense now,” he said, “‘make it small but satisfying’. A wish.”

Peter picked up the packet of chalk from where it had dropped from Irving’s hands. “Well, I’m game.” He took out a piece of chalk and wrote on the wall, just below the shadows. 

_ A pay rise. _

Constance nodded. “It’s a good one.” She folded her arms and tried to think. 

_ This is a bit awkward, being put on the spot in front of strangers.  _

“Any takers?” Peter said, holding out the chalk. 

“I’ll go next,” said Oliver. He took the chalk and wrote in neat letters. 

_ Make it up to the tower. _

Peter cocked his head. “What does that mean, Oliver?”

“I do Parkour, UrbEx. That sort of stuff. There’s a big tower on the University campus-”

Sam was aghast. “You mean Northcote house? You want to climb the tower?” 

“No, no, that’d be nuts. There’s a route up the side of the building onto the roof, leading to the base of the tower, but there’s a difficult jump half way along. Haven’t been able to do it yet.” 

Oliver handed him the chalk. Sam accepted it and bit his lip for a moment before writing on the wall. 

_ Pass with distinction. _

He shrugged and handed the chalk to Isabel. She started writing immediately. 

_ A day off. _

Oliver raised an eyebrow. “Just that?”

A distant expression crossed Isabel’s face as she looked at the ground for a moment. “Yeah.”

“Jesus, Isabel,” Lucy said, “you’re too young to look that stressed.” Taking the chalk, she wrote in large, deliberate strokes. 

_ My boss to stop looking at my arse. _

She spun around as she finished the final word, a grin on her face. “Who’s next? Irving?” 

Irving slowly approached the wall as if dragging himself from a reverie. He took the chalk and began to write slowly in small letters. 

_ Find a way to be happy despite my problems.  _

Oliver blew out slowly. “Man, I don’t know if they want anything too heavy.” 

“Well, if not they shouldn’t have asked  _ me _ .” Irving sniffed. “Are we done?”

Constance stepped forward. “It’s just me now.” She bent down and wrote underneath everyone else. 

_ To fall in love. _

“Wow, Constance, you don’t mean to say that you’re single?” Lucy said. “That’s even more implausible than finding messages on ancient stonework.”

“Yep,” Constance sighed. “What can I say? Long hours and very quiet colleagues.”

She looked again at the shadows on the wall. The words had now vanished, the sun’s inexorable progress breaking the precise alignment. 

Oliver cleared his throat. “Er, pub?”

*****

Constance settled into the same slightly wobbly chair that she had sat in on their previous visit. Lucy set Constance’s glass of rum and coke in front of her and sat down in the chair opposite her. She took a sip from her glass of white wine and bent forward over the table towards Constance. 

“So?” She raised an eyebrow conspiratorially.

“So?” 

“So, any progress?”

“Progress?”

“With your wish, of course.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Constance, puzzled.

“Really? I was watching you while I was at the bar. It’s ok, he can’t hear you from here.”

“I really don’t…”

Then Constance began to think. Before Lucy had come over, she had been staring at Irving for a long time as he sat talking to Sam and Oliver at the other end of the table. She had been resting her chin on one hand and idly playing with a lock of her hair in the other. 

Something about Irving reminded her of someone that she once had a crush on. The subtle melodic tones of his Scottish accent, or the line of his jaw, perhaps. Or the shading of dark stubble and the unkempt curls of his hair. They gave him an appearance that was academic with a hint of rugged outdoorsman. 

She had been thinking about his dark eyes, which seemed to her to radiate intelligence and detached, calm confidence. But was there a hint of vulnerability behind them, and pain? 

Just then an image appeared in her mind of Irving’s body beneath his blazer. As he pensively stroked his chin, Constance saw the flex of his bicep beneath his suit jacket; the tightening of his shirt across his chest as he leant slightly forward. 

Constance blinked. Butterflies were starting to flutter in her stomach. 

“Oh.”

Lucy was leaning back in her chair with a grin on her face, swirling the wine in her glass. “Oh yes.”

“But… Irving? Really?”

“Don’t ask me, it’s your crush.”

“Shhhh! Do you want the whole table to hear?”

“Well, yes I do, but don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret. It won’t be a secret for long, though, if you keep looking at him like that.”

Constance took a long gulp of her rum and coke. “I wasn’t expecting this. I feel like a sixteen-year-old.”

Lucy looked over at Irving and winced. “Oh dear, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you.”

Constance turned to look. Irving was gesturing with his left hand while explaining something. A wide band of gold glinted in the lamplight on his ring finger. 

Constance let out a long sigh and sank onto the table, head in her folded arms. “Oh  _ god  _ I need a shag.”

Conversation seemed to ebb away at that moment. Constance looked up. The rest of the table was staring at her. 


	3. Hidden Words, Pt II

It was a fairly decent walk back from the centre of Exeter to his flat, but Oliver had made it so many times that he the journey usually passed in a haze of half-remembered turns. This time, Oliver had been so engrossed in his thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed the hill. He stopped walking and looked back at the way he had come. The road behind him, lit by occasional pools of light beneath street lamps, sloped down steeply. Oliver was pretty fit, by his own reckoning, but even for him, this hill was a tough one. He would usually feel his pulse elevated by the time he had reached the top. But today, he hadn’t even noticed. 

He felt good. Really good. Like he could jump anything. He glanced at the wall of the house next to him appraisingly. 

_ Am I just buzzed? _

He took a few steps backwards and squared himself up, taking a moment to focus. 

_ Let’s see. _

He ran at the wall, then planted one foot on it, then the other, then flipped backwards. 

The jump felt like a dream, like flying for a brief moment. He landed perfectly, with his feet together. 

_ Man, I nailed that. I must be getting better at this.  _

He stepped back again, a bit further this time, then ran at the wall. One, two, three steps up the wall. He launched into the flip, flying faster than he had before. To his considerable surprise, he landed the double somersault with ease. 

_ Wow! I’m on fire tonight. _

Just as he was looking around for other surfaces to jump on, the window next to him opened and a shirtless man poked his head out. 

“Oi, mate!” he said, both angry and incredulous, “fuck off, yeah?”

“Er, sorry.” Oliver bit his lip and walked away. Immediately, a thought came to him. 

_ The tower.  _

*****

The next day, Sam was poring over a textbook at a table in the library when his supervisor sat down next to him. Sam pulled off his headphones. “Iris, what can I do for you?”

She put her heavy backpack down on the table with a thump. “Hi Sam, I thought I’d find you here. I just wanted to congratulate you.”

“For what?”

“The masters students turned in their essays for Signals and Perception this morning and I’ve just been looking at them.”

“Oh yes, quite a few of them were concerned about that one in the tutorial last week. Is there a problem?”

“Well, no. There isn’t. They’re all brilliant.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I honestly thought that most of them were going to fail. You must have worked some magic in your tutorial. They certainly didn’t seem to be getting it in the lectures.”

“Oh, I’m not sure I really did anything.”

“Well, whatever it was, keep doing it. I’m going to give them all Distinctions.”

As she left, leaning slightly with the weight of her backpack, Sam frowned. 

_ Pass with distinction… _

He shook his head. 

*****

Oliver woke up still elated. Not only had he made it up to the tower last night, he’d taken some amazing photos from the roof. He’d fallen into bed as soon as he arrived home, tired to the bone, not even bothering to undress. 

Now the morning sun was creeping through the substantial gap between his door and the carpet. The dust, hair and crumbs on it that hadn’t yet been trodden into it glowed softly gold. 

_ Man. I wonder if we have a vacuum cleaner.  _

He rolled over and groped for his phone with an outstretched hand. 

_ 10:24 _

Still quite early, for him. There was a text, too. He tapped it. 

It was from Isabel, twenty minutes ago. 

_ Unexpectedly free. Coffee?  _

He sat bolt upright and texted back immediately. 

_ Yes, anywhere you prefer? _

He vaulted off the bed and pulled his clothes off as fast as he could, throwing them into the corner of the room as he made for the shower. 

When he returned from the shower, Isabel had replied. 

_ Anywhere but Nero on South Street. I work there. Panini Palace? 11? _

Oliver texted back with a smile on his face. 

_ See you there _

*****

Irving smiled weakly at Janice, the deputy headteacher, as they passed in the corridor outside the staff room. She smiled in return, then raised her eyebrows as she remembered something. “Oh, Irving, there’s a package in your pigeon-hole.”

“Thanks,” said Irving. 

He didn’t remember ordering anything to the school. He pushed open the staff room door. The rack of pigeon-holes for the staff took up the entire wall opposite the door, stuffed with letters and papers from floor to ceiling. In his pigeon-hole, nestled in between stacks of unopened letters, was a small package wrapped in brown paper. 

He took it out, weighing it in his hand. It seemed to contain liquid, as it sloshed gently as he turned it. There was no address, it simply read ‘Dr. Irving MacLeod’. 

He looked around to see if anyone else was in the room. Another teacher was kneeling next to the coffee table, hastily dashing down something on a piece of paper. 

“Katya? Did you see anyone put something in my pigeon-hole this morning?”

“No, sorry”, said Katya, distractedly.

Irving broke open the paper with a thumbnail and tore it lengthways. Inside was a glass bottle, full of clear liquid, around which a small note was wrapped. Irving unfolded the note. 

_ It was good enough for Coleridge. _

Irving turned the bottle over to see the label. The paper was yellowing and almost peeling off the bottle. Written upon it was only one word, typed in faded black ink. 

_ LAUDANUM _

Irving was dumbfounded for a moment before realising what the note meant. 

_ Good god. Those fucking bastards.  _

“What’s that, Irving?” Katya was looking up at him. 

“Oh, nothing. Someone’s idea of a joke.” 

He gritted his teeth and stuffed the bottle into his satchel. 

_ This is going to be just a  _ great  _ day. Great.  _

*****

Oliver waved at Isabel through the glass frontage of the shop as he walked to the door. After holding it open for an old man, slowly leaving, he entered and sat down next to Isabel on a voluminous couch. She smiled. 

“I got the good seats.”

“Yeah! Sorry, am I late, or-?”

“No, I just got here.”

“Great, can I get you something?” Oliver stood up again. 

“Er, yes. A cappuccino please. Thank you.” 

A few minutes later, Oliver returned with two coffees. 

“So, unexpectedly free?”

“What, the coffee?”

“No, I mean you. Did you take a day off? What happened?”

“Oh, um…” Oliver saw Isabel take a breath before replying. “Um, unexpected childcare.”

“Oh, right!” Oliver tried not to sound too surprised. “Does… that not happen often?” Oliver shook his head. “No, wait, let me start that sentence properly. Wow, that’s great, how old is your son/daughter?”

Isabel laughed nervously. “Um, my daughter Joanne is six. To answer your other question, no, not really. I’m not in contact with her father any more, although his parents sometimes help me out. Very rarely. Like today.” She sighed. “It’s not their fault. They’re basically housebound with medical problems, but very occasionally they can get out and take Jo somewhere. So between school runs, two jobs and keeping a six-year-old entertained and healthy, I don’t get out much.” 

Oliver was taken a little aback. “Yeah. That’s… a lot to deal with. How do you manage coming out in the evening, with the mystery gang?”

“‘Mystery gang?’”

“Constance coined it. I like it.”

“Babysitters. They cost a fortune, but… I just feel like I need to do this, you know? This mystery stuff is interesting. I think I’d regret it if I didn’t take part. Also, everyone seems nice.” She sighed, looking wistfully out of the window for a moment. 

“Yeah, there’s some interesting people, certainly.” He sipped his coffee. “So... it looks like you got your wish.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. Did you?”

“Oh yes!” Oliver snapped his fingers as he remembered. “I did the climb last night, it was amazing!”

“That’s… hey, isn’t that Lucy?” Isabel stood up and went over to the window. Lucy was standing on the pavement outside, looking down at her phone. Oliver could see her mascara running down her cheeks. Isabel tapped the glass. Lucy turned around and saw Isabel, putting her hand to her mouth as she recognised her. She walked unsteadily towards the door. Oliver jumped up to open it for her and Isabel put her arm around her as she came in. 

“Oh Isabel, thank you, I just need a minute.” Lucy wiped tears away as she spoke. 

“Lucy, what’s wrong?” They sat down together on the couch. 

“It’s… oh I know I’m probably just getting worked up about it but I just… it’s my boss.” 

Oliver nodded. “The one you…?”

Lucy sniffed. “He had a stroke last night...”

“Oh, that’s awful.”

“...and...and…” Lucy struggled to speak as her voice began to quaver. “And he’s lost his sight. The doctors don’t know if it’ll come back.”

“Oh, that’s terrible, Lucy.” 

“And I just feel responsible, you know? Because of what I wrote last night. I know it’s silly and obviously it’s got nothing to do with it, but still...”

Isabel hugged her. “That’s right, it’s not your fault, Lucy. You know that.”

“I know,” she said, nodding. “I know.” She wiped her face with a tissue. “God, I’m sure I look like I’ve seen a ghost. I’m going to clean myself up. Thank you so much, both of you.” 

“See you in a minute,” said Isabel as Lucy weaved off through the tables towards the toilets. 

Oliver bit his lip. “Wow. That was… that’s awful.” 

“Yeah.”

Oliver pulled out his phone. “I’m just going to check something.”

Isabel’s face was serious. “The other wishes.”

“I’m sure it’s just coincidence.”

*****

**Mystery Gang Group Chat**

_ Oliver: So… anything happen with anyone’s wishes? _

_ Sam: Hmm. Funny you should ask. In a way, I suppose _

_ Oliver: Yeah? Like what? _

_ Sam: Some students in a class I teach all got distinctions. All of them actually _

_ Oliver: Wow ok _

_ Oliver: Anyone else? _

_ Irving: whoever it is has a sick sense of humour _

_ Oliver: Did something happen, Irving? _

_ Irving: bastards sent me some drugs to my school, laudanum _

_ Oliver: Er, shit _

_ Oliver: That’s _

_ Oliver: A bit dark _

_ Constance is typing a message _

_ Constance is deleting text _

_ Constance is typing a message _

_ Constance: Um _

_ Oliver: Go on, Constance _

_ Constance: I just had some dreams, that’s all _

_ Peter: Well, I got what I wanted.  _

_ Oliver: That’s great, Peter? _

_ Peter: Pay rise of 1%. That’s effectively a pay cut, adjusting for inflation.  _

_ Oliver: I think we need to meet up, guys _

_ Oliver: Tonight _

*****

The Ship Inn was bustling, full of the sound of clinking glasses and roaring conversation. The tang of tobacco smoke wafted in through the open windows from the gamut of smokers lining the alleyway outside. The taste of a hasty cigarette still lingered on Irving’s tongue. He both loved and hated the things. The smell was useful, he told himself, to cover up the scent of sex that he feared clung to him for hours after the act. For months, his habit had been getting worse. Now the association between tobacco smoke and the affair was so strong that every time he found a cigarette in his hands, he experienced a double pang of guilt. His lungs and his heart, both victims of his weakness. With every flame cradled in his hands, he set fire to another piece of his conscience. 

Irving pushed his way through the throng of people in front of the bar and made his way to the table at the back. 

Everyone else was already there. The mood was different this time. Constance was regarding him strangely as he approached. Lucy was barely paying attention, staring into mid air with a haunted expression on her face, fingers distractedly tracing the lines of the wood grain on the table. Oliver was in animated conversation with Sam while Peter sat back with his arms folded, occasionally shaking his head. Isabel looked up at him as he sat down heavily in the remaining chair. 

“Hi, Irving.”

“Hi, Isabel. You all right?”

“Yeah, you?”

“Ach, okay. Working late,” he lied. 

“I mean, with what happened? With what they sent you?”

“Oh right, that. Look here.” He reached into his bag and brought out the parcel. He placed it on the table with a snap of contempt. “Look at this shit.” He handed the note to Isabel.

“‘It was good enough for Coleridge.’ Is that meant to be a joke?”

“Bloody bad taste if you ask me.”

“Irving,” Oliver said. The others were looking over at him now. “What do you think?”

“About what? The package? I haven’t really had time to think about it. I think I’m pretty angry, to tell you the truth.” 

“I mean, about everyone’s wishes coming true.”

Irving raised an eyebrow. “Really, lad? Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?” 

“Well, I don’t want to get carried away, but we have to look at the facts here.”

“Alright, what are the facts?”

Oliver started to enumerate them on his fingers. “Wish number one; I made it up to the base of the tower on the Uni campus.”

“Well done, lad. But that was your doing, unless they gave you superpowers like spider-man.”

“Well, okay, no. But still, it happened.” Oliver continued. “Wish number two; Isabel got a day off. Her- um…” He stopped suddenly with a nervous glance at Isabel. 

Isabel interjected. “As it’s the school holidays, I’ve had to take the week off from work. But my daughter’s grandparents unexpectedly took her out for the day, so I got my day off.”

“Coincidence,” Irving grunted. 

“Ok, fine,”said Oliver, “coincidence. How many coincidences would you say is reasonable?”

“I don’t know. Depends what you’re asking me to accept.”

“Wish number three; Sam’s class all turned in essays that got distinctions.”

Peter leaned in. “That’s hardly remarkable, is it?”

Oliver snorted. “Maybe not where  _ you  _ went to school, Peter.”

“All right,” Irving said, “I’ll grant you, that is quite uncanny.”

“Wish number four; Peter got a pay rise out of the blue.”

Peter nodded. “The directors just upped and changed the procedures yesterday. It happens occasionally.”

“Now,” said Oliver, “onto the more sketchy ones. Irving, you got a mysterious parcel.”

“Aye. Well, it is a little mysterious now I think about it. It doesn’t have an address, so it must have been hand-delivered. I asked the secretary if he put it in my pigeon-hole, he said he didn’t. I can’t find anyone who did. The kids are on holiday, so none of them could have sneaked it in. And then there’s the bottle itself. The glass looks old; it’s caked in a thin layer of dust and grime that makes it look like it’s been on a shelf for decades. I haven’t opened it. If it really is laudanum, it’s a Class A drug.”

Irving took a breath. “But there’s no weird coincidence here. I’m guessing it’s not actually laudanum. I’m going to analyse it when I get home.”

“Analyse?” Constance said. “Do you have, like, a lab, or something?”

“Yeah. When the my department closed at the university, a lot of stuff ‘went missing.’”

“That’s cool.” She was looking at him with one hand cupping her chin and her elbow propped on the table as she lent forward in her seat. 

“Okay,” said Oliver, “now, Lucy?”

Lucy sighed and stared at the table for a long time before speaking. “Look, I don’t know what to think.” She necked the rest of her glass of white wine. “My boss had a stroke yesterday and now he’s blind. Maybe permanently blind. I know, logically, intellectually, that what I did couldn’t possibly have anything to do with that…”

“That’s terrible, Lucy,” Irving said, “and you’re right, there’s no way that anything you could have done could have caused that. No-one can do that. It’s impossible. Put it out of your mind, lass.” 

Sam nodded in agreement. “It’s natural when a tragedy of an unpredictable nature strikes to try to rationalise the cause, even to the extent of magical thinking. Don’t be ashamed, everybody does it. It’s how the human mind works. I’m not professionally qualified, but if you want to talk about it when we’re finished here then I’d be happy to.” 

Lucy nodded faintly. 

“Er,” Oliver said, “so that just leaves Constance?”

Irving noticed that Constance had been staring in his direction for a while. At the mention of her name, she started slightly. “Oh, er, what?”

“Your wish, Constance?”

“Oh, right, yes. Well nothing’s happened, really.”

Oliver sat back in his chair. “So, I’d say we’ve had four weird coincidences, two straightforward events and one, well nonevent.”

Irving nodded. “Alright, lad, but what does that prove?”

“I don’t know. But it must mean something, right?”

Irving frowned deeply, folding his arms. Taken individually, none of these events would have been worth a moment’s thought, but their superposition made him distinctly uneasy. Sam was right, though. Just because things didn’t seem to make sense on the face of it, that was no reason to indulge in magical thinking. 

“So,” Isabel said, “are we going to go to the next one?”

“Yes,” Constance said. “To be honest, I love a good mystery.”

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed. “I think I’m hooked now.”

Irving shrugged. “I don’t see why I should. The bastards could have gotten me sacked or even arrested.” 

Sam drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I’m… I’m unsure. Sending that bottle to Irving does seem to be a joke in dubious taste, even if it turns out to be harmless. I don’t have full confidence in their ethical framework. It would be interesting to read their risk assessment.”

“You’re not joking, are you?” Oliver asked, incredulously. 

“About what? Also I was going to say that their motives and objectives are still a mystery.”

Lucy sniffed. “I’m going. I want answers.”

A silence fell over the table as everyone waited for Peter to answer. He looked around at the circle of faces. “Well, yes, I think so. So far we’ve just gone and looked at things. What’s the harm in that?”


	4. Cards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did have the text conversations in a different font in my google doc, but pasting into AO3 has removed it. Maybe I could use html to change the font for those sections but sod that.   
> The text conversations have text-style punctuation conventions deliberately, except for characters who don't know text etiquiette and use full punctuation. Some characters never capitalise their texts, also deliberate.

The next day, Oliver was walking along the High Street when someone thrust something towards his chest, dragging him from a reverie. It was a card of some kind. 

“Hi, come to Timepiece!” A man with a long beard and a chequered shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, was holding a stack of flyers in his left hand, the other proffering one towards Oliver. His smile seemed well worn into his face. “There’s a voucher inside for a free drink.” 

Oliver accepted it, half-smiling in response without really slowing his pace. 

_ Yep, I’ve been there, man.  _

Handing out flyers had seemed like easy money before Oliver actually tried it. He regarded himself as quite friendly and personable, but as soon as he had stopped in the middle of the pedestrianised area, took out the flyers and tried making eye contact with people, it was as if he’d become a piece of street furniture. Crowds had flowed around him like water around a rock in a stream. He had put half the flyers in a bin on his way home. 

He was about to do the same to the object that the man had given him when he looked at it properly for the first time. It didn’t look like a flyer, rather it was a piece of thin card with an elaborate pattern on it, like a stained glass window. He turned it over. 

It was a tarot card. The Fool. There was a young man in dressed in the classic motley of a court jester walking across a field of thorns, with a small dog yapping at his feet. There didn’t seem to be any vouchers attached, or any mention of the club. 

He stopped walking and turned back to the man who handed it to him. 

“Hey, er, is this what you meant to give me?”

The man, trying in vain to catch the eyes of other people walking past, looked taken aback for a moment at the fact that someone had initiated a conversation with him. 

“Oh, what’s that?”

“You just gave this to me.”

“Oh. That must have gotten mixed in with the flyers somehow. Um, here, have another one.”

“Thanks, but, is this yours?”

“Nope, never seen it before, mate. Sorry. I can bin it for you, if you like.”

Oliver almost handed the tarot card to him, but after a moment’s thought instead put in his coat pocket carefully. It was a rather nice object, after all. “No, that’s alright thanks.” 

He turned and continued down the street, losing himself in a different train of thought. 

*****

Sam lifted the heavy textbook out of his backpack and onto his desk, pushing a printed stack of academic papers out of the way to make room for it. He sighed as he turned the pages listlessly. He had good days and bad days. The good days were great. After unsuccessfully attempting undergraduate degrees first in maths and then in philosophy, he had finally found in psychology a subject in which he had so far been able to sustain a deep interest. He devoured textbooks and papers in day-long sittings, feeling the thrill of discovery with every page. The bad days could be truly terrible. Just looking at his bookcase made him feel almost physically nauseous and trying to concentrate on something constructive just brought on a feeling of dread. 

Today was middling. He felt the drive, but couldn’t summon the mental energy to concentrate. He turned the pages listlessly, each one a rolling wave, rising, peaking, then crashing down on the other side. 

Something flat drifted out from between two pages on a gentle vortex of air. A card. 

Sam picked it up. It was a tarot card. The Magician. A man in robes stood in the midst of flames, wearing bands of iron around his arms and wrists, touching his fingers to his temples. 

Someone had evidently forgotten to remove their bookmark when returning the book to the library. Sam looked at the page. 

“‘Europa and the Bull’? Why am I reading Greek myth?” he wondered aloud to himself. He rubbed his eyes. “I think it’s time I had a break.”

Sam put the card aside without a second thought. 

*****

Constance stood tapping her foot as she waited nervously by the Left Luggage office. The roar and squeal of a passing train came and went as she tried to retrace her steps the night before in her mind. She shook her head. 

“Ms Brown? You’re in luck.” The voice of the station manager came from behind the door before she shouldered it open, holding Constance’s trenchcoat. 

“Oh, thank you so much!” Constance gasped. “I thought I’d never see it again.”

After exchanging a few more words of heartfelt thanks, Constance walked towards the station gates, swinging the coat over her shoulders. She put her hands in her pockets, where by force of habit she fingered the fluffy seam on the inside that was slowly unravelling. Unexpectedly, her hand touched a piece of card. She withdrew it from her pocket and looked at it in surprise. 

It was a tarot card. The High Priestess. She had her arms crossed over her chest, holding an ankh and a sickle, with dull grey coins on her closed eyelids. Constance frowned. She checked the label on the inside breast pocket, where she had written her name with a black marker pen. 

_ Constance Brown. _ There it was. 

She shrugged and put the card back into her coat pocket. 

*****

Irving leaned against the worktop in the small staff room kitchen, peering into the cup of black coffee that he held close to his chest. He watched the patterns of condensation wax and wane across his glasses as the warm air rose from it, carrying the rich, complex molecules to his olfactory glands. It was a kind of meditation, he supposed. It certainly helped calm him down. 

It was still early. He had left the house before his wife had woken, driving to the station and leaving his car in the car park to travel in by train, as he normally did. Doing it earlier than usual was a joy. The soft light of the morning had set the misty air aglow with pinks and yellows as it drifted across the still fields and neat hedgerows. 

His stomach growled noisily, wrenching him back to the present. He’d skipped breakfast in order to get here so early. He set the coffee down and looked around the kitchen for something to eat. His eyes settled on a packet of cereal. He tipped the contents into a bowl, the impacts setting it ringing in the silence. Then something else dropped into the bowl. 

It was a tarot card. The Emperor. He stood, wearing a white robe and crowned in fire, holding a spear of lightning in his hand. 

Irving looked at the cereal packet. He couldn’t see any promotion on it. He shrugged. It was a nice object, in and of itself. He put it in his pocket. 

*****

_ Oliver: Pub?  _

_ Peter: Sorry, working late tonight. Has anything happened?  _

_ Oliver: No _

_ Oliver: Just fancied it _

_ Irving: yes _

_ Constance: Yeah _

_ Constance: Funny thing happened, I got my coat back from lost property in the station and there was a card in it that wasn’t mine _

_ Oliver: Weird _

_ Sam: What kind of card? _

_ Constance: A tarot card _

_ Oliver: OMG _

_ Oliver: I got one too!! _

_ Sam: I also found a tarot card _

_ Irving: Hmmm. Me too _

_ Oliver: Peter?  _

_ Peter: There was one tucked into my FT. _

_ Oliver: Dare I ask what an FT is? _

_ Constance: Newspaper for rich people _

_ Oliver: K _

_ Oliver: OMG this has to be a thing _

_ Oliver: Anyone else? _

_ Constance: Mine was the High Priestess _

_ Oliver: Fool! _

_ Oliver: I mean mine was the fool _

_ Constance: lol _

_ Sam: The Magician _

_ Irving: emperor _

_ Peter: I also had the Emperor _

_ Oliver: Interesting _

_ Isabel: Hi all _

_ Isabel: What’s going on? _

_ Oliver: Everyone’s finding tarot cards! _

_ Isabel: Wow,  _

_ Isabel: I found one in some clothes I got back from the dry cleaners _

_ Constance: What was it? _

_ Isabel: I’ll just look _

_ Isabel: The Empress _

_ Oliver: Interesting _

_ Lucy: I just opened a parcel from ebay _

_ Lucy: There was a card inside _

_ Lucy: The emperor _

_ Constance: This is so weird _

_ Lucy: How did they do this? I ordered these clothes a week ago _

_ Sam: What? _

_ Oliver: Wow _

_ Irving: Huh. Mine was inside a cereal packet in school. I almost never eat cereal at work. How the hell did they do that? _

_ Isabel: This is getting pretty creepy _

_ Isabel: How did they know I had dry cleaning done? They must be watching my house _

_ Constance: They must have been watching me too, to have known that I left my coat on the train _

_ Sam: I agree, this is getting a bit too much. I would make a request for the data they hold on us under data protection regulations, but we don’t know how to contact them.  _

_ Peter: Good idea. Do we have anything to go on? _

_ Sam: Can’t think of anything _

_ Constance: Their number is blocked. Is there any way to get around that? I’ll contact my provider. I can also try some contacts I have in the police, they can trace things like this _

_ Sam: Good call _

_ Constance: The kind of things that they’re doing - it seems like some kind of magic trick. Are we being filmed for a TV show? Are any of you in on it? _

_ Sam: Not me _

_ Irving: no _

_ Oliver: Nope. Fits though. Some of this seems genuinely impossible _

_ Isabel: No _

_ Peter: Not me _

_ Lucy: No _

_ Oliver: Must be you then, Constance _

_ Constance: No! _

*****

As he was typing another reply, Oliver’s phone vibrated with an incoming call. It was Isabel. Oliver looked for a moment at the small thumbnail of her as it rang, her dark hair hanging slightly over her nervous smile, before answering the call. 

“Hi, Isabel.”

“Oliver, I…”

“Please, call me Oli.”

“Um, okay.” She spoke haltingly.

“Are you alright, Isabel?”

“Um, not- not really. I’m pretty freaked actually. Would- would you mind coming to stay at my place tonight?” Her voice was a little breathless. “I’ll make up another bed, I just-”

“Isabel-”

“It’s that- they could be watching the house-”

“Yes, of course I’ll come.”

“I’d just feel better if there’s someone else here, not just me and Jo.”

“I’ll be over as soon as I can, okay?”

“Thank you so much, Oliver.”

“Oli, please.”

“Thank you Oli. I’ll cook dinner.”

“That would be brilliant. I’ll bring the wine.”

*****

The bottle clinked against the glass as Oliver poured ruby liquid for Isabel. She nodded in thanks as the level reached a couple of centimetres below the rim. Two thin columns of steam rose between them from their plates of spaghetti bolognese. To Oliver’s nose, the rich, fruity smell was divine. 

Isabel’s first-floor flat was tiny. They sat at a small table behind the two-seater grey sofa, their knees almost touching. A tall standard lamp lit the room in cosy yellow. 

“Sorry about the mess,” Isabel began.

“Oh no, don’t worry. You should see my place. Actually, you shouldn’t,” Oliver said. 

Isabel chuckled politely. “Well, at least you don’t have toys everywhere.”

“Again,” Oliver said, smirking, “I’m not sure you know what a student household full of geeks is like.” 

Isabel laughed, but Oliver could see that not far behind the joviality, she still seemed shaken. 

The door to Joanne’s bedroom squeaked slightly. Isabel turned around in her seat. 

“Jo? Are you hiding behind the door? Come on. Show yourself, young lady.”

The door opened inwards slowly to reveal her daughter, who poked her head around it. Like Isabel, her hair was dark and long. She rubbed her eyes. 

“Mummy, I can’t sleep.”

“Go back to bed please, Jo.”

“Who’s the man, mummy?”

“This is Oliver. We’re having a sleepover tonight.”

“Oh,” Jo said, nodding sagely, “I’ve heard of this.”

“What? What have you heard? You’re six! No, don’t answer that.”

“Is he your boyfriend, mummy?”

“No! I mean, not unless he behaves himself. Come on, you. Let’s get you back into bed, troublemaker.” Isabel got up from the table, her cheeks starting to flush. 

“But what about the man, mummy?”

“Oliver will stay at the table, babe.”

“No, the other man, mummy.”

Oliver’s hand paused as he was lifting his wine glass to his lips. 

Isabel knelt down in front of Jo. “What other man?”

Jo pointed back into her bedroom. “Outside the window.”

Oliver and Isabel shared a look. Her eyes were wide. Oliver got up from the table. “Can you show us the man, Jo?” 

She shook her head. “He’s gone now.”

Isabel pushed open Jo’s bedroom door. “Can you show us where he was, babe?”

Jo went to the window and pulled back the curtain. Outside, the sky was dark, the street lit only by the orange glow of the sodium street lamps in occasional pools. 

Jo pointed. “There, by the light.”

“What did he look like? Can you describe him?”

Jo nodded. “He was a bit fat, but not very fat. He had a big coat, and a big hat. And a big beard. And his coat had poo on it!”

“Poo?”

“Bird poo!”

“Really? Isn’t that something. What sort of hat did he have?”

“Like a cowboy hat.”

Oliver came to stand behind her. “And can you tell us where he went, Jo?”

Jo nodded. “He walked behind the lamppost and disappeared.”

Isabel’s expression had been growing less concerned and more sceptical. Now she broke into a grin and mussed Jo’s hair. “And how could he hide behind the lamppost, if he was fat? I think you’ve been feeding us a tall tale. Come on, let’s get you back into bed.”

“No mummy,” Jo insisted, “he didn’t hide behind it, he just walked behind it and disappeared.” She folded her arms. 

“Come on, grumpy-face. Back to bed. I’ll read you a story.” Isabel turned to Oliver for a moment. “Sorry about this. Go and eat before it gets cold.”

“Not at all,” Oliver said, “I’m just going to go and take a look around. I won’t be long.”

Oliver slid on his shoes and pulled his coat on. Leaving the door unlocked, he descended the dark stairwell quietly, aided by the stained carpet on the stairs, two patches on each step flattened by footsteps. He opened the door and crossed the road to the street light opposite. 

The air was totally still, which was unusual for this time of year. Some stars in the clear sky were peeking through the light pollution. He put his hands on his hips and looked around. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for; footprints or something, he supposed. Lurking shapes in the bushes. There were few places that someone could hide here and the area was pretty well lit. Feeling vaguely foolish, he shrugged and turned to walk back indoors. 

Just as he did so, he caught a scent of something in the air. Just for a moment, a faint smell of strong body odour and something else… acrid. He took a step back towards the lamppost, sniffing. There was something, he thought. He looked around. He was alone on the street. He pulled open the collar of his shirt and sniffed himself to make sure it wasn’t him.

It certainly wasn’t; even though he came here in a hurry, he’d showered beforehand. He tried to find the unpleasant scent again, but his nose was now overwhelmed with the fresh smell of his own deodorant. 

He returned to the flat, wondering if he’d imagined the smell. He climbed back up the stairs and quietly closed the door. 

Isabel was sitting at the table with her glass of wine in her hand. She had her head cocked to the side quizzically. “Did you find anything?”

Oliver shook his head as he took his shoes and coat off. “No.”

“She probably dreamed it. She tells me all sorts of things.”


	5. The Room

A few days later, on Saturday morning, Irving scrubbed his hands vigorously in his lab’s small sink and towelled them dry. He took off his lab coat and hung it on the wall behind the door. He looked at it for a moment, the incidents that had caused each of the different burn marks and stains flashing through his mind. Then he put the memories aside and opened the door. 

As he stepped through into the drizzle and locked up behind him, he turned his mind to the experiments he had just performed. The liquid had been laudanum, all right. Not only had it contained opium, but it also had a high proportion of alcohol; more than most whiskies. Commercial recipes for laudanum hadn’t used that much alcohol since the nineteenth century. Moreover, the concentration of decay products in the liquid was also high, as were the levels of reaction byproducts. That meant two things; that it had been manufactured using crude methods and that it had been sitting around for many decades afterwards. There could only be one conclusion. It was an antique bottle of laudanum. 

He jogged back across the garden to the house and opened the kitchen door. Sarah was sitting at the table reading a sheaf of papers that she put down immediately as he came in. For a moment, she looked up at him as if he was intruding, then softened her expression. 

“Hello, love.”

“Hello.”

He took off his wet shoes and padded over to the coffee machine. 

Sarah cleared her throat, speaking to his back as he put in a pod and filled the water reservoir. “I’m going to be out late tonight. You’ll have to get your own dinner.”

Irving nodded. “Aye. Night with the girls?”

“Yeah.” Sarah paused. “I’ll be staying with Kate.”

“Right.”

Irving didn’t want to turn around. He couldn’t keep his cheek from twitching as he fought to keep the disgust from his tone. Sarah wasn’t good at hiding her affair. Her excuses were always paper thin, but Irving didn’t want to burst them. The consequences were too painful to contemplate. So, he just continued pretending ignorance. When he’d met Angela, he’d not resisted the temptation for an affair of his own, purely from jealousy and spite. His relationship with Sarah had been crumbling for months. Each furtive glance, each awkward kiss another wound they inflicted on each other. Their marriage was dead, but neither of them could admit it, even to themselves.

Irving's phone buzzed, off in the hallway. "I'd better get that," he murmured as he walked away. He hated the sense of relief that he felt.

He picked up his phone. There was a message on it.

_ Go to 5 Barnfield Crescent at 23:00. Go to the basement of the property and enter via the broken window. Go to the room that overlooks the rear garden. What do you feel? _

Irving put the phone in his pocket. 

_ It’ll be something to do, I suppose.  _

*****

_ Irving: anyone else get that? _

_ Oliver: 5 Barnfield Crescent? _

_ Irving: aye _

_ Constance: Me too. I know that road, it’s quite posh, I think? _

_ Peter: My lawyer’s offices are on that road. A few doors up. Number 5 must be the derelict one.  _

_ Constance: Derelict? _

_ Peter: One of the houses in that row is boarded up. _

_ Oliver: I’ll bet it’s that one _

_ Sam: Is anyone else uneasy about entering a property via a window? _

_ Peter: Yes. Will have to be careful. _

_ Constance: Peter, you housebreaker! _

_ Peter: If it is the derelict one, I heard that the actual owner went missing a few years ago. The house is stuck in legal limbo. It’s had squatters in it before occasionally. I’ve always wanted to look inside.  _

_ Isabel: 11 is pretty late _

_ Oliver: Will you be able to make it?  _

_ Isabel: Yeah, just awkward, won’t be able to stay long _

_ Constance: Let’s meet at another location and walk to the house as a group _

_ Sam: Good idea _

*****

As they arrived at the house, Constance felt a prick of fear. Number five was indeed the boarded-up house as Peter had suspected. Barnfield Crescent was a short terrace of neat, red-brick Georgian townhouses, four storeys tall. The frontages were all immaculate, with hanging baskets of flowers next to the doors to each property. All except number five, whose boarded windows and front door contrasted strongly with the affluent air of the rest of the area. In front of the terrace was open access to the houses’ basements down a set of stairs. 

They descended the stairs. The window into the basement was boarded-up too, but when Oliver pulled at it, the board lifted away easily. Almost all of the glass behind it had broken and fallen to the floor, the fragments now lying in a small drift that squealed and cracked as Oliver stood on it. The room beyond was dark. 

Oliver took out his phone, flicked on the flashlight and swung the beam around the basement. As Constance leaned forward she could see graffiti almost completely covering the walls and ceiling. 

“Well, we won’t have been the first people to break in, that’s for sure,” she said. 

Oliver poked his head into through the window. “I can’t see any cameras.” He looked back at the others. “I’m game.”

Constance nodded. “I’m right behind you.”

Peter held back the board and Oliver vaulted through. He landed with a crunch of broken glass. “Careful, there’s more glass on this side.”

“Erm,” Sam said, “I must admit that I’m a little uncomfortable with this.”

“Oh, shush, Sam,” said Lucy, rolling her eyes theatrically, “we can say that we made you do it, if you like.”

“Oh, no,” Sam spluttered, “I’m not saying that I’m not going to go willingly. I am. I just wished to note that we are technically breaking the law.”

“Noted,” Peter said, grinning, “now, though the window, mate.”

Sam hopped over the windowsill after Oliver, then turned to hold out a hand to Constance. She scrabbled over, taking care not to scratch herself on the shards of glass still sticking up from the window frame. 

The interior of the basement smelled like damp. By the light of Oliver’s phone, Constance could see lines of discolouration on the walls even through the graffiti. The basement was one long room that stretched to the back of the house. Oliver had walked down to the other end of it and was looking up to a small window in the top of the back wall. 

Constance approached the stairs up to the ground floor. They too were covered with inscrutable graffiti. When everyone was through the window, Constance started to climb. 

She emerged into the main hallway of the house on the ground floor. It was long and narrow, not wide enough for two people to pass. Although the hallway was almost totally dark, she could see small shafts of light peeking through chinks in the boards covering the windows of the rooms adjoining it. The ceiling of the hallway was high, bordered with ornate coving. The architraves and skirting looked original, although now much degraded. The graffiti continued here too, sprayed over the dated wallpaper. 

The doors to the ground floor rooms were all open, except for the room at the end of the hallway, at the back of the house. Glancing inside the others revealed that some of the furniture was still here. The middle room seemed to be some kind of office or waiting area, with a low coffee table and a couple of chairs, and a large desk at the back. The front room was empty, but metal plates bolted into the walls seemed to suggest that some large equipment may have been mounted to them. 

Isabel emerged from the staircase behind her. “The message said to go to the back of the house.”

Constance nodded. As she turned her torchlight down the hallway to the back room, her heart began to beat a little harder. On the wall above the door, there was sprayed writing, but unlike most of the rest of the tags, it was clearly legible. 

_ THE ROOM. _

“How  _ ominous _ ,” Irving said, sarcastically. 

There was also writing on the wall to the right of the door, not in spray paint but marker pen. Constance held up her phone for light in order to read it. “This says; ‘Fezzer - fifteen minutes, JonT - thirteen minutes, Paula - sixteen minutes, Wallo - twenty-three minutes…’ It’s a list.” She moved her phone down the wall. “There are quite a lot of names.”

Irving frowned. “Of what?”

One entry was notable by the time next to it. 

_ Darius - three hours. _

This entry was overwritten with the word  _ bullshit. _

Oliver put his hand on the door handle. “They had to have been doing something in the room.” The handle squeaked as he turned it. He pushed open the door slowly. 

Inside, the room was almost empty. The boards on the windows were holding firm, letting in no light whatsoever. Oliver walked slowly into the room, his gaze following his phone’s light as he held it up to inspect the walls. One by one the others followed. 

As Constance stepped inside, she felt a twinge of anxiety. The room’s walls were graffitied, as was the rest of the house, but there was something different about it. There were simple tags here, but less of the elaborate designs present in the other rooms, and those that were present seemed incomplete.

Peter was the last in, closing the door gently, preventing the mechanical door closer from swinging it shut with a loud bang. He scratched his head thoughtfully. “There’s something different about this room,” he whispered. 

“The graffiti,” Constance said quietly, “none of it’s finished.”

Sam nodded. “You’re right.”

By this point, everyone was using their phones as torches. The beams of light flashed around the room chaotically. 

Irving folded his arms. “I’m not usually claustrophobic,” he said, “but something about this room is a bit… off.”

“Yeah,” Lucy whispered, “this definitely must have been on Most Haunted.” 

Isabel was standing in the centre of the room, looking around cautiously. Constance could see her shifting her feet, balancing her stance, holding herself poised. Constance touched her on the shoulder. 

Isabel reacted instantly, striking Constance’s hand then stepping away and turning to face her in one motion. 

Everyone in the room jumped at the sudden motion. After the moment of panic Isabel relaxed again, reaching out to Constance. “Sorry! I’m sorry Constance, I just slipped into a stance. Are you alright?”

“Yes, don’t worry about it,” Constance said, rubbing her hand. 

“Sorry.”

“Do you do martial arts, or something?”

Isabel nodded. “Tae-kwon-do.”

Constance, interested, would normally have launched into a conversation but something held her tongue. The others were right, something about the room made her feel unusually anxious. She felt a quiver of tension in her gut. 

She looked around at the others. Irving and Oliver were inspecting the room in close detail while Sam stared at a metal fixture on the wall. Lucy had folded her arms tightly and was staring at the floor. 

Off in the corner, Peter was breathing audibly and rubbing his sternum. Constance frowned. 

“Peter, are you okay?”

Constance shone her torch toward him. His face was pale. 

“I think I need to sit down,” he said, weakly. 

Constance took him by the arm. “I saw a chair in the other room. Come with me.” She wasn’t sorry to be leaving. 

As soon as she passed the threshold, she felt calmer, as if she had snuck out of an awkward meeting. Peter headed towards a soft-looking armchair, but Constance directed him to a wooden chair instead. 

“Not that one, Peter. It could have needles between the cushions.”

“Oh. Oh fuck, yes.”

She eased Peter down onto the chair. He murmured his thanks and sat back heavily, leaning his head backwards against the wall. He closed his eyes and spoke haltingly between long, deep breaths. “Never had that happen before. My doctor said that I had to avoid stressful situations. Thought I was fine until just then.”

Constance sat on the wooden coffee table, leaning forward. “Is it alright if I examine you? I trained as a doctor.”

“Please do.”

She held his wrist, counting his heart rate by her watch. It was high, but falling, if slowly. “Okay. When you’re ready, can you lift your head and look towards me, please.” She took her phone out again and shone the flashlight into his eyes. 

After a few minutes of gentle questions about his symptoms and medical history, Constance nodded to herself. 

“I’d like you to stay sitting down for a few minutes so that we can get your pulse back to normal. It seems most likely to me that you had a panic attack, nothing more serious. You should talk to your GP about your symptoms, though.” 

Peter smiled. Colour had returned to his face and he was looking brighter. 

“Thank you, Constance.”

They both flinched as they heard a door slam from down the hallway. Constance stood up and looked around the door. 

Lucy was leaning against the wall of the hallway, chest heaving, eyes wide. Constance ran towards her. “Lucy, what is it?”

Lucy began to catch her breath. “Something’s… something’s not right in there. I just had to get out.” She straightened and took a couple of steps forward, fanning her face with her hand. “Oh jees- I need a bloody smoke. You don’t, do you?”

“No, but I think Irving does.”

Lucy looked back at the closed door that she had just slammed shut. She shook her head. “I’m not going back in there.” 

*****

When Lucy had slammed the door, Sam had felt the noise shake his chest cavity like a nearby gunshot. A fresh jolt of electric fear pulsed in his chest and fizzled in the nerve endings in his limbs and fingertips. He concentrated on his breathing. Slowly in, hold, slowly out. 

Whatever this was, it was quite remarkable. Everyone was experiencing similar symptoms, a shared hysteria that seemed to build and build. Everyone left in the room was experiencing something which was like, by now, a severe panic attack. He had stopped examining the room when he had noticed that he was starting to feel breathless. He had surmised that the place had been a doctors’ surgery or possibly a dentist’s practice, judging by the mounting plates on the walls. 

Everyone was conscious of the strange effect of the room. Irving had stopped looking around and was just staring straight ahead, gritting his teeth. Oliver had flattened his back against a wall with one leg bent, foot braced as if ready to launch himself across the room. Isabel had settled into a ready stance, knees bent, feet spread, arms raised into a guard. 

Sam slowly sat down and crossed his legs, his movements deliberately calm and quiet. 

“How long have we been in here?” Irving whispered, almost too quiet to be heard above the sound of Sam’s pounding heartbeat. 

Sam looked down at the timer on his phone. “Twelve minutes and thirty seconds.” His voice came out hoarse. 

Irving looked at him. “You started a timer when we came in?”

“No, I just noted the time.”

“Could,” Oliver began, “could it be, like, some kind of magnetic field, or something?” He swallowed. “I heard that that’s how they make places feel haunted.” 

“Horseshit,” Irving grunted. “I’ve been inside a three-tesla field. I was only nervous because I couldn’t remember if the surgeon put a metal pin in my arm when I broke it.”

“Tesla, like the car, Tesla?”

“No, not the fucking car. Tesla is the unit of magnetic flux density.”

“The what now?”

“How strong a magnetic field is.”

“Okay, professor. What about a gas? Could it be a gas?”

“Could be a gas, aye. Couldn’t see any canisters. Could be hidden nozzles in the walls. Fuck, this isn’t a good idea.” Irving was panting now. “I can’t feel my fingers.” 

Sam interrupted. “That means your blood oxygen is too high, Irving. You’re hyperventilating. Stop talking and take slow, deep breaths. Five seconds in, five seconds out.”

“Ah, fuck this shit.” Irving turned, wrenched open the door and stumbled from the room. 

As the door slammed again, Oliver started violently. 

Isabel turned her head to look at Oliver. “You okay?”

“Shit. I was expecting the noise but it still freaked me... Fuck, what if Irving’s right and it’s like a nerve gas? We should get out of here. Guys?”

Sam spoke as calmly as he could. “Leave if you like. I’m staying, Oliver.”

Oliver started to visibly shake. “No, I’m out.” He took a few shaking steps and scrabbled at the door handle for a moment before nearly falling over himself to get out. 

After the door slammed once again, the room was silent apart from Isabel’s and Sam’s breathing. Only two light sources remained, Sam’s phone pointing upwards, showing a stopwatch and Isabel’s phone flashlight, pointing down at the ground, casting grizzly shadows onto the walls. Sam watched Isabel’s face. His first impression of her had been of a meek, mousey sort of person, but Sam could see that that was at most a facade. She was still in a combat stance, looking straight ahead, her face tilted slightly down, her jaw set with an expression of rigid determination. 

Another shiver of fear felt its way up his spine. A mental image appeared unbidden into his mind. He had the distinct impression that the devil himself, sitting in hell, watching him at this very moment, was reaching out for his soul. 

_ Fascinating. My mind has attempted to rationalise what I’m experiencing. It’s odd that it’s chosen something so supernatural.  _

He turned his focus inwards, using all of the techniques he knew to induce a calm metal state. He bit his lip as he concentrated. 

_ It’s working, but it’s as if there is a base level of anxiety that I can’t quell. Like a fire I can beat back but not put out. That is interesting. _

He looked at Isabel again. “How are you feeling, Isabel?”

She was still breathing slowly, although she now appeared to be not so much ready to fight but instead frozen rigidly in place. Her voice was dry. “I feel… like…”

“Yes? Is there some sensation that you’re feeling?”

“...Like there’s an animal, a tiger, right behind me, ready to pounce if I move…”

“That,” Sam said, calmly, “is fascinating. I can assure you that there is nothing in this room apart from us.”

Isabel nodded slowly. “I’ve had enough.” She turned stiffly and walked out of the room, easing the door closed. 

Sam sat alone in the room. He smiled to himself. 

_ Let’s see what you’ve got, you devil.  _

*****

As soon as Oliver stepped over the threshold, he felt the tension depart almost instantly, replaced with a faint glow of euphoria. 

The hallway was empty, although he could hear Constance and Peter talking in the next room. He walked up to the open door. He felt lighter than air. 

Constance stood up from her chair as she saw him. “Oliver, is everything alright?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He nodded faintly. “Where are Irving and Lucy?”

“They went out for a smoke. What about Isabel and Sam?”

“They’re sticking with it. I think Sam wants to see how long he can go.” Oliver clicked his fingers in sudden frustration. “Damn, I didn’t ask Sam how long it had been before I left.”

Peter leaned forward. “What’s it like in there? Does it get worse?”

Oliver nodded absently. “It’s so strange, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack in there. But then, as soon as I stepped outside, nothing. I feel like… I don’t know, like I’ve just outrun a cheetah or something.” He exhaled deeply, puffing out his cheeks. “Phew. What a rush. I’ve never felt anything like that. Massive adrenaline high.”

Constance folded her arms. “I’m a bit concerned. What is this? I don’t know what could be causing this - it could be dangerous.”

“Maybe. It certainly felt dangerous in there. But now…” Oliver stroked his beard. “If it was some kind of gas, the effects wouldn’t just disappear when you left the room.”

“Gas? Like a chemical weapon? Is it that bad?”

“Dunno. Felt like it.”

Constance paused for a moment. “I think we need to get them out.” She looked back at Peter, who gestured toward the door.

“I’m fine. Go on.”

Oliver and Constance walked back down the hallway to the closed door. Just as they reached it, it opened and Isabel stepped out, closing the door quietly behind her. Constance took her by the shoulders. 

“Isabel, are you okay?”

Isabel took a deep breath. “Yes. Yes I think so.” She looked back at the door. 

“Suddenly fine?” Oliver asked. 

“Yeah. That’s so weird!” A grin started to spread across her face. “Wow!”

“Yeah, quite a rush.” 

Constance let her shoulders go. “How is Sam?”

“He seems to be handling it,” said Isabel, “I wouldn’t have thought it, but he seems like a daredevil.”

“I think we need to cut this short,” said Constance. She stepped past Isabel and pushed open the door. 

Sam was sitting in the darkness, his face illuminated from below by the glow of his phone. He looked up slowly. 

“Sam-”

He rose as Constance started to speak. He spoke unsteadily as he tried to keep his breathing under control. 

“I heard you through the door. I concur.” He walked towards the door slowly. “I don’t think I can learn anything more in here except whether this phenomenon can cause more severe physical symptoms, which I’m not willing to test.” 

He stopped, standing just behind the threshold. “I’m still experiencing the effect.” He waited for a moment longer and then stepped over the threshold, holding the door open. He took a deep breath. 

“And now?” Constance asked.

“Now, the effect is receding. Rapidly. That is most interesting.” 

Oliver shook his head. “Man, you’ve got balls of steel.”

Sam smiled. “Just a working knowledge of the human fight or flight response.” He let the door close behind him. “I think I’m finished with my experiments for today.” 

Despite his cool manner, Sam looked shaken. Oliver clapped him on the back. “I think we all need a drink.”

Sam looked down at his phone. “Ah, twenty-six minutes. Does anyone have a pen?”


	6. The Woods

The last rays of the fallen sun had already left the sky when Oliver made his way back to Barnfield Crescent, leaving it a hollow blue leeching away to black. This was the third time he’d returned to the house in as many nights. The challenge of the room was both like and unlike any other. The mastering of one’s fear was integral to extreme sports like parkour, but the room provided a direct confrontation with one’s own mind. Oliver found it spellbinding. This time, he thought. This time he’d beat this Darius guy. 

He slowed his pace as he walked down short terrace. Someone was coming towards him with a small dog and he didn’t want to be seen entering the house. Suddenly the dog broke away from the woman’s lead and came running towards him. It yapped excitedly and when it reached him it rolled over on the ground, tongue lolling and wagging its tail. 

The young woman came jogging up behind it. She had long black hair that hung in curls down past her shoulders, wearing a white dress. She had somewhat mediterranean skin and spoke with a slight accent that Oliver couldn’t quite identify. “Sorry! Really sorry, I don’t know what happened, I think the lead broke.” She bent down to talk to the dog. “What did you do that for, Akis?” 

“It’s fine,” Oliver said, “he seems like a nice dog.”

“He seems to really like you,” she said. 

Oliver scratched his beard. The dog looked familiar somehow. 

“Yeah, looks like it,” he said. 

The woman clipped the lead back onto the dog’s collar and stood up. “Well, nice to meet you. Sorry about that.”

“No worries.”

Oliver watched them go. He frowned as he realised where he’d seen the dog before. 

_ The tarot card. It was the same dog… _

He shrugged. 

_ Just a coincidence.  _

He cast a furtive glance around the crescent, but could see no-one else. As he quietly descended the stairs outside number five, he felt his phone vibrate. He took it out. He had received a new message several minutes ago. 

_ There’s an abandoned farmhouse in Newton Wood. There you’ll find a detector. Scan the grounds and see what you can dig up. _

The group chat was already buzzing. 

*****

_ Sam: We’ll need transport for this one, who has a car? _

_ Peter: I can take one as well as myself. _

_ Lucy: Tandem bike, Peter? _

_ Peter: Lotus _

_ Lucy: Dibs!!1 _

_ Irving: sheesh _

_ Irving: can get the rest of you in my land rover _

_ Sam: Great _

_ Sam: Are we going tonight?  _

_ Peter: I’m free _

_ Constance: Let’s do it - creepy exploration in the dark! _

_ Isabel: ok _

_ Lucy: Yeah _

_ Irving: alright _

_ Oliver: Yes! _

_ Irving: text me your addresses and I’ll pick you up _

_ Oliver: I’m in the room _

_ Irving: again, oliver? _

_ Lucy: You’re a glutton for punishment, Oliver. You should apply for a job in my office _

_ Irving: alright, i’ll pick you up from there _

_ Oliver: No, pick me up from my flat. I’ve just thought of something I need to bring _

*****

Sam used his phone to navigate to the wood as Irving drove. The country roads were single track, with dense hedges on both sides more than twelve feet high. Stray brambles and tree branches protruded into the road on both sides, brushing over the car as it passed them. They were now out of sight of Exeter. The hedges occasionally parted at a gate to a field, but apart from the beams of the headlights that lit the foliage and the mud-flecked road ahead, the nighttime landscape was almost completely black, with an occasional bright dot of a farmhouse in the distance. 

Sam looked down at his phone again. “I think that this next gate is the closest we’re going to get to the wood.”

Irving nodded. “Aye, we’ll park here, then.”

The car slowed to a stop in a small lay-by next to a gate. Irving killed the engine and flicked off his lights. “We’re walking from here, kids. I hope you all brought appropriate footwear.”

Constance groaned. “I should have thought of that.”

“What size are you? My wife’s boots are in the back.”

“Oh, are you sure? Won’t your wife have some questions?”

Irving grimaced. “Ach. Don’t worry about it.” 

Sam got out and zoomed his map in. “We go down this track. Then, hopefully we’ll find a path.”

Oliver got out of the car and put the bag that he had been carrying on the ground. He unzipped it and took out a helmet. Isabel looked at him askance. “What’s that for?”

Oliver grinned. “The helmet isn’t so much for protecting my head, but for mounting these.” He took out a small camera and a torch and clipped them onto each side of the helmet. “I’m borrowing these from my flatmate who does BMXing.” 

He strapped himself into the helmet and flicked on the torch. 

Irving clicked his tongue. “Best turn that off until we’re in the woods. We’re not exactly here with permission of the landowner.” 

Oliver turned the torch off again. “Good point.” 

A low rumble of a sports car engine from around the corner signalled the arrival of Peter and Lucy. Peter gingerly parked on what looked like the least muddy patch of ground by the side of the road. After a few more minutes of preparation, they all began to trudge down the track towards the dark woods. 

The woods grew more foreboding as they drew nearer to them. The trees were tall pines, tightly packed in the unnatural manner of deliberately sewn woodland. 

The night was quiet and still even before they entered the wood, but once inside, the silence seemed oppressive. Constance began to talk nervously to fill the empty air. 

Once they were fully inside the wood, Oliver turned on his torch. As he swung the beam back and forth across the ground in front of them could see that they were following a path leading towards the centre. Irving had brought a powerful torch from his car and a couple of smaller torches that he gave to Sam and Isabel. Everyone else turned on the flashlights on their phones. 

Before long, they came to a small clearing. As they drew closer, they could see indistinct shapes within it, illuminated by their torchlight. 

They were the walls of a ruined house. Lumps of roughly-hewn red stone covered with dank moss. The roof of the building had long since fallen in and there was little left apart from the walls themselves, now only waist-height at most. 

“The message said there should be a detector,” said Isabel. 

Sam pointed to a dark object leaning against a tree. “Aha, this must be it.” 

It was a metal detector. A circular coil at the bottom of a metal rod, with a control panel at the top above the handle. Sam picked it up and pushed the power button. An LCD screen on the control panel lit up, displaying a couple of numbers and a gauge that occasionally blipped upwards and then fell down again. 

Constance tapped Sam on the shoulder. “Give it to me, Sam. I’ve been trained.”

Sam handed to her. “Ah, of course, yes.”

Constance appraised the unit. “That’s weird. The gauge doesn’t show any units. It must be a cheap one. It feels quite solid, though.” 

She began to sweep it from side to side as she walked slowly forward. Everyone waited in silence as Constance worked, listening for any sort of feedback from the detector. 

Lucy shivered. “I’m not sure which is more creepy, Barnfield Crescent or this place. Did we have to come here at night?”

“Better at night,” said Irving, “less likely to get caught by the farmer who owns this place.”

After a few minutes of searching, Constance turned the metal detector upside down, puzzled. “Not even a blip. It surely should have picked up a nail or a can by now.” She held her watch next to the coil. No sound emitted from the device. 

She sighed. “That’s why, then. It must not be calibrated.” 

Oliver called through the darkness. “Hey, I found some stuff!” He emerged from behind a ruined wall holding a pick and a spade. 

Constance looked back at the metal detector and made an exasperated sound. There seemed to be no calibration options. “I think… I think we might have to give up. I think this detector is broken.”

Sam approached holding a flashlight. “Really?”

“There’s no way to calibrate this and it’s not detecting anything. I think our mysterious messenger has cocked it up this time.”

Peter looked around at the pitch-dark wood, nervously. “Well, I can’t say I’m not relieved. I think this place is too foreboding even for the doggers.”

“Yeah,” Isabel murmured, “it’s hard to believe that you can drive for fifteen minutes out from the city and get to a place like this. It seems like we’re lost in time.” 

Constance gave the device one final check and shrugged. There seemed to be nothing that she could do. She propped it up against a nearby tree. Immediately, the device emitted a whistling noise. 

Everyone jumped. 

Constance picked the device up again. She upended it and passed her watch over the coil. 

Nothing. 

She righted it and aimed the coil at the base of the tree. The device started whistling again. As it did so, the display registered an increased level of… something. Whatever the gauge was measuring. 

“What… what is this detecting?” she wondered aloud. “Could it be radiation?”

“Let me have a look at the detector,” said Irving, holding his hands out. 

Constance passed it to him. Irving inspected the detector end and frowned. 

“It’s a solid metal coil, not a tube like a geiger counter would have.” He handed the detector back to Constance. “I want to see whatever it is it’s picking up.”

Constance passed the detector over the ground around the tree in slow arcs until she found the point of highest intensity. 

“Here.” She rested the coil on the ground. “I think whatever it is is a little way down, judging by the way the response is distributed.”

Oliver hefted the pick. “Ready.”

Everyone pointed their torches at the ground. Oliver, Sam and Isabel worked  **in** turns to loosen the soil with the pick and clear it with the spade. The soil was thick with tangled tree roots and if not for the exceptional sharpness of the tools, the task would have been almost impossible. 

Oliver took a moment to look at the spade he was holding. “Man, what make is this? It goes straight through these roots as if they were nothing. I’ve got to get one. I don’t even have a garden.”

Constance looked at the spade’s blade as Oliver’s head torch shone on it. It looked like a normal spade to her eyes, but in the torchlight it was difficult to tell. 

After about twenty minutes of digging, Sam’s spade hit something that made a hollow noise. He bent down to scrape the loose soil away from it with his hands. Then he froze, looking down at the object in the bottom of the hole, the corner of which was just visible jutting from the red earth. 

Everyone could see what it was. The edge of a wooden box, lying askew in the soil, corner pointing upwards. 

Lucy shivered. “Oh god, I really hope that’s not what I think it is.”

Irving shook his head. “It doesn’t look like a coffin.”

Lucy groaned. “Oh, you had to go and say the word, didn’t you?”

Constance hovered the detector over the object gingerly. As she brought it closer, the whistle rose to an ear-splitting shriek before she pulled it away, wincing. 

Sam stood up, brushing off his hands on his trousers then putting his hands on his hips. Oliver clapped him on the shoulder. 

“Good work, Sam. I’ll take over. Let’s find out how big this thing is. I’ll dig down this side of it.” 

Sam stepped back away from the hole and started to look around, watching the trees around them. 

Oliver aimed a few blows of the pick at the earth next to the box, then excavated the loosened soil with the spade. The box was at least fifteen centimetres deep. The wood itself had been varnished with something in the past, which had stopped the moisture in the soil from completely destroying it, but the iron nails holding the box together had almost rusted away. 

Oliver picked up the pick again. Just as he was aiming a large overhead swing, Sam suddenly flinched, almost stepping backwards into the hole. Mid-way through his downswing Oliver lurched out of the way, missing the patch of earth he was aiming for, instead striking the box with the full force of the pick. 

The pick went straight through, crushing the corner and making a fist-sized hole. 

Oliver put the pick down. “Jesus, man! I almost put this through your foot.” 

Sam hadn’t noticed. He was still staring wide-eyed out into the trees as he fumbled in his pocket for the torch he had put away while digging. 

“Sam,” Constance asked gently, “are you alright?”

Sam dragged his eyes away from whatever he had been looking at. “Uh… sorry. Sorry, I just thought I saw something. Never mind.” He turned back to face the hole, but couldn’t seem to stop himself checking over his shoulder every few moments. 

Constance looked back at the others. Lucy had her arms folded in front of her, face set with worry, tapping her foot incessantly. Peter was staring in the other direction, pacing up and down and passing his phone’s light all around the edges of the small clearing, as if watching for a sudden approach. Isabel had one hand clasped over her mouth, wide eyes fixed on the box while she pointed her torch at it. Oliver too was staring at the hole that he’d accidentally punched. His head torch illuminated a tiny section of the box’s interior. 

“What-” he began hesitantly, “what should we do?”

Constance stepped forward. “We need to be careful. If there are remains in there, and if the container was sealed until you put the pick through it, there could be dangerous material in there. I doubt that’s the case, though, looking at it.” 

Oliver bit his lip. “Um. Shall we poke a phone in there?” 

Everyone nodded. 

Oliver pulled his phone out of his pocket. He turned its flashlight on and started a video recording. Then he gingerly lowered the phone down through the hole, holding the edge of it between his forefinger and thumb. He turned the phone through ninety degrees to get a good look at the inside of the box, then slowly pulled it out. 

Constance looked over his shoulder as he started the video. The middle of the box had been invaded by tree roots that partially obscured the other end. It looked as if it could be more than a metre in length and perhaps half a metre across. 

Oliver sighed. “Well, I can’t say I’m disappointed.”

The video came towards the end. As the phone started to move upwards, Constance caught a glimpse of something paler than the dark roots. 

“Wait, go back. What was that?”

Oliver scrubbed backwards through the video and then groaned. “Oh, no. I hope that’s not what I think it is.”

As the phone was being lifted out of the box, there was a brief line of sight to the other end, where there was a pile of objects that were reflecting the bright flashlight more than the grubby wood. 

Constance nodded. “That’s bone.”

Isabel gave a squeak. 

Peter had stopped pacing, standing stock still, not moving his eyes from the box. “What… what sort of bone?”

“I can’t tell,” Constance said calmly, “I’ll need to get a closer look.” 

“Do we really need to?” Peter asked, agitated. “It’s a box of bones under the ground. Everyone’s thinking the same thing, right?” 

Constance started to take off her coat and cardigan as she replied. “It’s a wooden container, yes. But there are a few things that are unusual about it. For one, it’s smaller than an adult coffin and not shaped correctly either. It’s also clearly been here for a very long time, as the roots of this tree have grown through it, around it and over it.” 

She folded her coat and laid it on the floor. “This tree is probably more than a century old. Also, the box is not buried level, which shows a lack of respect for the occupant. My working theory is that whoever lived in that house-” she pointed to the ruin, “-buried their dog in a box at the end of their garden.” 

She rolled up the right arm of her blouse as far as it would go, bent down to her coat and retrieved a latex glove from the inside pocket. 

“Erm,” said Oliver, “do you carry plastic gloves with you everywhere?”

“They’re really useful!” Constance smiled as she pulled it over her hand with a snap. 

“This just isn’t fazing you at all, is it?”

“This is like my day job, except it’s dark and the people are nicer.” She knelt down next to the hole. “Also, there’s mud. And a few other differences. There are gloves and biological remains, is what I’m getting at.” 

There was a rustle of foliage somewhere off in the distance. Sam flinched again, whirling around and shining his torch at the treeline. 

“Did you hear that? There was definitely something!”

Oliver shook his head. “Probably just a fox or something, Sam.”

Sam continued watching the trees. 

Constance put her fingers into the box. 

Isabel turned away with her hands over her face, squirming in fear. “Oh my god, I can’t look.” 

Constance reached deeper. When her whole hand was inside, she could feel the cold knots of roots with her fingertips, snaking through the box. She felt around them for a clear opening to the rest of the box, deeper inside. 

Oliver was kneeling down beside her, perhaps for moral support. 

She found the opening and pushed her hand through it. She readjusted her arm to get her elbow into the hole so that she could reach further. 

“Feel anything yet?” Oliver asked. 

“Just roots.”

Constance pushed further and further. Just as her arm reached up to her shoulder, she felt something with her fingertips. 

“Almost… there…” She said, gritting her teeth as she stretched. 

A small pile of objects. They were light and brittle to the touch. She carefully moved her fingers along one and picked it up at its midpoint. 

Now she had to get it out of the box without damaging it. She tried to tuck it against her wrist parallel to her arm. 

Sam spoke in a urgent whisper. “What’s that?” He pointed toward the trees. 

Everyone turned their flashlights to the trees, small spots of light amid the darkness. 

Sam gave a strangled cry. “There!”

“What?” Hissed Peter. “What is it?”

“I saw… I saw…” 

“Sam! Get a hold of yourself, man! There’s nothing there, look!”

Constance interrupted, tension rising in her voice. “Everyone, can you please give me some light?”

Oliver swung his head torch back to her. “Sorry, Constance. You think you’ve got it?”

“Yeah, I just-” 

Something grabbed her arm. 

Constance shrieked. 

“What, what is it, Constance?” Oliver leaned forward. 

“Something’s… something’s…” Constance struggled to get the words out as a wave of terror rose within her. She tugged her arm hard against whatever was gripping it. “It’s just a root, I think it’s just a root…”

It didn’t feel like a root. She could feel cold fingers on the bare skin of her forearm. 

She pulled her arm backwards. The bone she was holding in her hand snapped, but she almost had her elbow free. 

“Do you need help, or…?” Oliver put his hand on her shoulder. 

Constance gasped. “Yes! Please!”

As Oliver was trying delicately to find some way of putting his arms around her shoulders without groping her, Constance felt a tug. The fingers gripped tighter. Her arm was slowly being pulled back in.

“Just grab me and pull!”

Just as Oliver put his arms around her, she was savagely dragged back downwards. Her arm disappeared into the hole up to her shoulder, pulling Oliver to the ground on top of her. 

Constance screamed in wordless terror. The hand on her arm tightened its grip, fingernails digging into her flesh. Sam, Isabel and Irving all rushed to help. With their hands and arms they reached around her shoulders and torso and pulled. For one gruesome moment, Constance felt her tendons straining and she thought her arm might be ripped off, but without warning, the force pulling her downwards let go and she and the others tumbled backwards in a heap. 

She scrambled backwards away from the hole, breathing heavily and whimpering. 

Oliver leapt to his feet. “What the  _ fuck _ was that?!”

“Something’s down there!” Constance screamed. 

Everyone panicked. Lucy ran straight out of the clearing back along the path with Peter just behind her, lurching along as fast as he could, clutching at his chest with one hand. 

Constance was lifted to her feet by Isabel’s surprisingly strong hands. She took her by the elbow with one hand and with her torch in the other, they ran towards the edge of the wood. 

Constance saw nothing else as she ran, her heartbeat thumping in her ears, eyes focusing on the small patches of torch light on the ground in front of her. 

After a few minutes of running headlong through tree-filled blackness, they reached the edge of the wood. But they didn’t stop. They kept running until they reached the cars. 

Peter collapsed to the muddy ground as they neared them, unable to catch his breath. Everyone else was doubled over with exhaustion. It was a few moments before anyone spoke. 

“What the hell happened?” Irving panted. 

Oliver caught his breath first. “Something pulled us back in. It had Constance’s arm. Just a minute, let’s see your arm, Constance.” 

Constance held up her right arm. Her sleeve was still pulled up above her elbow. Both the sleeve and her arm were smeared with streaks of soil up to her shoulder, but there was no sign of the hand that gripped her forearm. 

Constance stared at it for a moment with her mouth open. “There’s no mark… but, but I felt it!”

“There was definitely something down there,” said Oliver, “I felt it pull Constance’s hand. We all felt it.”

“How?” said Irving. 

“You felt it too, Irving!”

“Aye, lad. I’m just trying to explain it. So do you think someone was down there under the tree in an underground chamber, waiting for one of us to stick a hand in?”

Constance shook her head. “No, I felt all around the inside of that box, except for the very back, which we could see on the video anyway. There were no other holes big enough for someone to put their hand in, except the one we made.”

“Besides,” Oliver added, “how could they know we wouldn’t excavate the whole box? I only put the pick through it by accident. No, that’s impossible.” 

“Impossible’s a big word, lad,” Irving said. “Let’s say it’s implausible. Maybe it was some kind of mechanical device.”

“No,” Constance said, “it wasn’t. I felt it. It was a hand.”

“Ah, don’t be so sure, lass. The mind can play tricks, especially when you can’t see what you’re feeling.”

“If  _ you _ want to go back there and stick your arm in the box, then-”

“I didn’t say-”

Sam interrupted. “I’m not going back in there.” He was staring back at the woods, his eyes wide, barely blinking. 

Oliver turned to him. “What was it you saw in the trees, Sam?” 

Sam closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his hands. “It was probably nothing. Just nerves.”

Oliver paused. “You seemed quite sure at the time.”

“I… I saw someone watching us. A woman, I think. I saw her just for a moment, as a torch beam swept across her.” 

They all looked back at the wood. No one spoke for a few moments. 

Isabel shivered and hugged herself. “I need to get home.” She looked at Oliver meaningfully. “You can stay at my place again if you don’t want to go all the way home tonight.”

Oliver seemed to relax a little, his voice a little less tense. “Yeah, that’d be great, thanks.”

Irving stood up straight and stretched. “Aye. Let’s think no more about this until the morning when our heads are clearer. Peter, you okay to drive? Here, let me help you up.”

“Thanks.” Peter winced as he heaved himself to his feet with Irving’s help. “Yes, I’m fine. Let’s go before the farmer finds us.”

Constance settled into the back of Irving’s car. She looked back at the woods, now just a dark silhouette against a night sky lit by hazy moonlight. She rubbed her forearm. It still felt cold. 

*****

When the video file finished transferring to Oliver’s laptop, he opened it immediately. He scrubbed through the first few minutes, the walk to the forest and then through its eerie stillness. When he got to the farmhouse, he started it playing at normal speed, then sat back in his chair. 

Watching the footage was profoundly strange, like watching himself in a found-footage horror film. He found himself clenching his fists in suspense. 

Constance now had her arm in the hole up to her shoulder. Then came Sam’s urgent whisper. The camera panned up as Oliver had looked. There was a flash of white as Oliver’s head torch passed over something in the trees. 

Oliver was shocked into immobility for a moment, then leaned forward quickly to rewind the file. Then he went forward frame by frame. 

There she was. In ten frames, a young woman was standing beside a tree, about twenty metres into the wood from where they were. She was wearing a white dress and had dark hair that hung to below her shoulders. 

Oliver breathed out slowly. “Holy shit…”

It was difficult to make out facial features from any of the frames, as they were all blurred to some extent, but Oliver recognised her. It was the girl with the dog. 

He cropped out the best image and copied it to his phone. 

*****

_ Oliver: Who’s ready for something super creepy? _

_ Constance: OMG not me _

_ Oliver: Better not download this image I’m sending then _

_ Oliver: <girl.jpg> _

_ Constance: Ohh _

_ Constance: No, I can’t look _

_ Isabel: What is this Oliver? _

_ Sam: YES _

_ Sam: I knew it _

_ Irving: this from the camera? _

_ Oliver: Yeah, but wait, there’s more _

_ Lucy: What’s Gal Gadot doing in the woods, watching us? _

_ Irving: who’s this gal? _

_ Lucy: google, Irving _

_ Irving: so, what the hell was this young lady doing in the woods…  _

_ Constance: Ok I’ve got to look _

_ Constance: OMG! _

_ Constance: I’m not sleeping tonight!  _

_ Sam: I’m not saying that I don’t think that she could have dug a hole underneath an ancient tree in order to put a box under there, but she’d have had to have changed her dress afterwards. That dress looks spotless, and those woods were muddy _

_ Irving: what’s the more, oliver? _

_ Oliver: So _

_ Lucy: Is she barefoot? _

_ Sam: Could be, looks like it _

_ Oliver: I met her today _

_ Constance: WHAT _

_ Isabel: please explain _

_ Irving: what? _

_ Oliver: Just before I got to the barnfield house earlier, she was walking towards me and her dog came over to say hello. We chatted for a few seconds then she left. I didn’t think anything of it at the time _

_ Irving: you’re sure it was the same girl?? _

_ Oliver: I mean, this image is blurred so I can’t be sure _

_ Oliver: But she had the same hair, the same dress _

_ Sam: I’m not sure this image is good enough to make a judgement like that _

_ Oliver: Alright fine _

_ Sam: I’m not saying it’s not true _

_ Irving: was there anything else on the tape? _

_ Oliver: Just everything else as we remember it _

_ Oliver: It’s too big to share here, I’ll share a link when I’ve got it uploaded somewhere _

_ Sam: Thanks _

_ Irving: has anyone reported the find to the police? _

_ Constance: I was planning to, if I had been able to get a look at a bone, but _

_ Constance: That didn’t work _

_ Constance: If it’s human remains, it should be phoned in for someone to take a look at. I’m going to go back tomorrow morning and try again to get a bone _

_ Constance: I’m taking my endoscope this time _

_ Constance: After that, I’ll phone it in if the bone looks human _

_ Irving: what time? if it’s early i can give you a lift _

_ Constance: Early is fine _

_ Constance: I’ll call you with pickup location _

_ Lucy: A date, woohoo _

_ Lucy: Go Constance! _

_ Constance: Please stop _

_ Irving: what? _

_ Constance: Please ignore her _

*****

The light was a blessed relief. Its soft glow warming her cheek as she strode down the track toward the wood felt like the calming caress of a loved one after the terror of the night before. She closed her eyes for a moment in order to drink it deep into her soul. 

“Careful, Constance,” warned Irving. “This bit’s uneven.”

“Thanks.” She opened her eyes again. The wood stood tall and dark before them, but not as foreboding as it had appeared last night. She adjusted the heavy endoscope bag on her shoulder. 

The wood was full of birdsong as they passed between the trees. The scents of the pines mingled with the smell of fresh rain. Irving had been mostly quiet. He was walking slightly ahead of Constance and when they sighted the farmhouse he walked straight to where they thought the hole had been, whereupon he stopped in puzzlement, looking down at the ground. 

“Which one was the tree, again?”

“It was this one,” Constance said, rounding the tree.

“Can’t be, there’s no hole here.”

They both looked around the small clearing. 

“Um,” Constance began, “it was definitely this one.”

“The bastards have filled it in already.”

Constance put the endoscope bag down and kneeled on the ground. There had only been brief rainfall the previous night and the water hadn’t penetrated the soil to any depth. The ground here was hard, as if it hadn’t been disturbed in weeks, if not longer. There was no mound of soil nearby, either. The roots that ran across the surface were also unbroken. Constance distinctly remembered Oliver cutting through the very root she was kneeling on. 

She stood up, perplexed. “Let’s have a look around, just to make sure…”

Irving nodded. They circled the ruined house, but nowhere did they find a hole, or anywhere that looked remotely familiar as the site of the hole. They came back around to the first tree that they had approached. 

Constance crouched down again. There were footprints, not made by them this morning, that clustered around this tree. “Look, Irving, look at these prints. Those have got to be Oliver’s. He wears those big skate shoes.”

Irving bent down to look. “I think you’re right.”

Where the hole had been filled in, there were no prints. Constance picked up a stick and drew a line around the area where the prints seemed to have been removed. 

It was an area around the base of the tree about a metre by a metre and a half. Constance stood up and put her hands on her hips, perplexed. 

Irving was frowning deeply. He knelt down to feel the roots with his fingers. He traced it all the way to the base of the tree, seeming now to also remember Oliver cutting through it. “How,” he breathed, “did they do this?” 

Constance had no answer for him. She shook her head in wonder. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”


	7. Another

The hushed rush of air through aging computers filled the library’s bland workroom. Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and sat back in the uncomfortable office chair, blinking his sore eyes. He had been staring at the computer monitor, willing words to issue from his fingers, but they were not forthcoming. He should be writing notes for a paper review with his fellow postgraduates but everything he’d just learned from the paper that was lying on the desk next to him had vanished from his mind. 

He looked at the time in the bottom corner of the screen. 

_ 15:23? What have I been doing for the last half an hour? _

He couldn’t even remember. He’d only just come to his senses after an extended daydream that had ranged far and wide. He began to retrace his steps back through his train of thought. The answer to his question didn’t surprise him. He’d been thinking about the box in the woods. 

He’d been wracking his brain about how the trick might have been done, but he couldn’t come up with anything plausible. When Constance had sent photos of what the clearing in the woods looked like in the morning light, he’d had trouble believing them. Subsequent discussion and study of the images around the base of the tree had further confused him. Now, the only thing that he was convinced of was that they were being targeted by some person or persons with a large amount of time and resources, no matter what their methods may be. That perhaps chilled him more than anything else. 

There was a movement close behind him and someone spoke in a timid female voice. “Um, excuse me, Sam?”

He turned around in his chair. A young woman had approached him. She was wearing a light jacket over a pale dress with a satchel over one shoulder, the strap of which tangled slightly with some of the long tresses of dark wavy hair that hung down her chest. Her expression was apologetic. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, in a melodic accent Sam couldn’t quite place, “we haven’t met really, I’m in one of your tutorial classes. I’m sorry to disturb you but I wondered if I could talk to you for a moment?” 

Sam only vaguely heard what she said as a realisation struck him. 

_ She… she looks like the girl… in the woods... _

There was an awkward pause before Sam could summon his wits to respond. 

“...Er, yes. Of course. Please, sit. If here is alright, that is? Would you like to talk somewhere else?”

She looked around, but there was no-one else in the room. “No, here is fine, thank you.” She pulled up a chair from a nearby desk. “I’d just like to come to talk about why I haven’t been coming to your sessions and about the problems I’ve been having with keeping up with the work.”

Sam listened carefully and sensitively. She described a difficult situation of having to care for an elderly relative while trying to keep up with full time education. Sam offered advice as best he could, but ultimately, he said, the best recourse would be to approach the university for assistance. 

“Rest assured,” he continued, “your situation is not unique, although you might understandably feel isolated. The university does have support mechanisms that you can engage with. If you like, I can put you in contact with the relevant people. If you could email me your contact details I’ll arrange a meeting.”

She thanked him sincerely and after a little more discussion, she left. 

Sam reflected for a moment. His lack of close family had one advantage, at least, in that he was spared having to deal with situations like that. 

He turned back to the computer, about to draft an email to the university support services, before stopping and cursing himself. 

_ I didn’t ask her name! What a moron.  _

He jumped up and rushed to the door of the room, hoping to catch her walking down the long corridor towards the stairs. He opened it and stuck his head out. 

She wasn’t there. It had only been a few seconds. She couldn’t have made it to the stairs already, even if she’d run. She must have gone into one of the study rooms on this corridor. Sam walked briskly past each of the rooms, looking through the small windows. 

As he neared the last one, he felt a creeping sense of dread. He opened it and looked inside. She wasn’t in that one either. 

He closed it and walked slowly back along the corridor to his computer, wondering exactly what to think. 

When he sat back down at the computer, he searched his emails for the registration details of the course. He looked through each name, mentally matching each name to a face he remembered. He got to the end of the list. 

_ I know all of these people.  _

_ She’s not on the damn course. _

_ What the hell was that about? _

*****

Oliver stared at the message on his phone intently, clenching his jaw. A drop of sweat trickled down his brow. 

_ For this trick, we will need a volunteer.  _

For three days after the woods, they had had nothing, until this. Oliver tapped a message into the group chat. 

_ Oliver: Hey guys, I think I’m going to do it _

His phone buzzed. He almost dropped it in shock. It was a new text message. 

_ Thank you, Oliver. _

_ Gather outside Oliver’s flat at 8pm.  _

Oliver jumped to his feet, looking at the clock on the wall. It was seven o’clock. 

_ Constance: Did you get that?  _

_ Oliver: Yeah _

_ Constance: They must be watching the group chat somehow! _

_ Irving: at this point I can’t say that I’m surprised _

_ Irving: i’m looking forward to a bloody good explanation of all this _

_ Oliver: Kinda regretting it now _

_ Isabel: Don’t worry, Oliver, we’ve got your back _

_ Oliver: Thanks, Isabel _

_ Isabel: Besides, you’ll be outside your house too, right? Maybe they’re going to do something to your house _

_ Oliver: They better not _

_ Oliver: Although I suppose there’s not much chance we’re going to get our deposit back anyway _

_ Constance: Do you want to meet somewhere beforehand?  _

_ Oliver: No, thanks, I’m good. Got stuff to do. See you guys later _

Oliver put the phone down on the table and sighed. Maybe he had been a bit hasty in volunteering, but he’d done it now. Whatever they were going to do, it was probably better that it was him than one of the others that had volunteered. 

He stood up and stretched. He wasn’t alone in the flat, at least. Jay was here, in his bedroom up in the converted attic. 

He looked around the living room. The amount of visible floor space was quite small, he realised. Only occasional patches of stained, threadbare grey carpet could be seen beneath the piles of books, games, stacks of university notes, takeaway menus, food wrappers and miscellaneous plastic bags. The tower of pizza boxes had started to lean precipitously in recent weeks. Oliver suspected that that was the source of the smell that he couldn’t quite identify. 

_ Better do some tidying.  _

When he was midway through his second bin bag, he heard the stairs to the attic creak behind him. He turned to see his housemate Jay ambling down, yawning and bleary-eyed. His blond hair was standing up at odd angles and he was still wearing his dressing gown. As well as underwear, Oliver chose to assume. 

“Hi Jay, early night?” Oliver asked, cheerfully. 

“No, why?” 

Oliver shrugged. “What’s up man?”

“Not much, man, not much. Hey, kudos with the bin bags. Was going to do some tidying myself this week.”

“Yeah? Cool. Don’t overdo it though, man. You’ve got to build up to these things.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” Jay nodded sagely. “Hey, you hungry? I could really go for pizza.”

“Right now I’m kinda off pizza, I’ve gotta say.”

“Okay, no worries. I’ll go anyway. I fancy a walk.”

“Really? You feeling alright?” 

“Yeah, I think so. You think Giovanni’s does breakfast?” He wandered to the door and opened it. 

“You going out like that?”

Jay looked back at him just for a moment before he stepped outside. “Like what?” He closed the door. The latch clicked, leaving the flat in silence apart from his retreating footsteps down the metal steps down the side of the building. 

Oliver shook his head. 

_ No shoes, no wallet, no keys. Jesus, he’s not normally that bad.  _

Oliver started stacking plates to take into the kitchen when there was a knock at the door. He rolled his eyes, wondering which missing item Jay had noticed first. 

*****

As Irving turned the corner onto Oliver’s street, Constance called out from the back of the car. “Oh, it looks like Oliver’s waiting for us already.”

Irving felt a sudden lifting of tension. He hadn’t noticed that he’d been so worried. He frowned. The very fact that he was on some level concerned for Oliver’s safety was telling. 

Isabel leapt out of the car as soon as Irving stopped it, followed by Constance and Sam. Oliver’s flat was the upper floor of a two-storey house which had been divided in two, augmented with what looked like a roof extension as well. He was standing on a metal stairwell that led up the side of the house to the door. Peter and Lucy were already there, talking with him. 

By the time he had crossed the road and started up the steps, Isabel was giving Oliver a hug. 

_ Huh, must have missed that happening.  _

“So…” he began, “have you noticed anything unusual so far, Oliver?”

“No,” said Oliver. “I just came out here a few minutes ago.” 

Everyone’s phones chimed with a new message. Sam had his in his hand. 

“Aha, I was waiting for that,” he said. “Let me see… ‘we’re ready, come inside.’”

“What?” exclaimed Oliver, “they can’t have been in my flat, this is the only door!” He retrieved the keys from his pocket, looking perplexed. 

He unlocked the door and pushed it. There was a rustling of plastic as two open bin bags full of rubbish were pushed over as it opened, spilling a tide of fast food menus and drinks cans all over the floor. 

The door opened directly into a sitting room that was more full of objects than Irving’s entire house. Shelves lined the walls, festooned with books and action figures. Two japanese swords hung above the archaic gas fireplace, contrasting strongly with the wood-chip wallpaper, painted pale green. The carpet, where it was visible beneath piles of action figures, rubbish and who-knows-what else, was ragged and matted with stains of various brownish shades. As Irving stepped over the threshold, the air became noticeably staler. He felt dirtier just entering the place. 

Irving was expecting Oliver to at least attempt some kind of apology for the state of it all, but after taking a couple of steps into the room he had stopped and was staring open-mouthed at a large box in the middle of the room. It was around six feet by two feet and was made from roughly-cut wood, like a packing crate. It was resting on a large electronic scales, which showed ninety-four kilograms. 

Oliver spluttered, looking around the room in dismay. “What happened to the bloody  _ coffee table _ ?”

Everyone else filed into the small room behind him as he approached the box and picked up the piece of paper that lay on top of it. “What the hell does this mean?”

He showed the paper to Irving. 

_ Box + lid = 15kg _

_ Body + soul = ? _

_ Soul = ? _

Irving felt a chill come over him as he realised what it meant. 

“Pfft. What a stupid game,” said Peter, looking over Irving’s shoulder at the note. “What the hell do they expect us to do with this?”

Irving spoke slowly and gravely. “Think about it, Peter. What do you think might be in this box that could weigh sixty-nine kilograms?”

No-one spoke for a moment. 

“No… they wouldn’t...” Peter’s voice was a hoarse whisper. 

“I can’t see any holes in the box.”

Peter blanched. “I think I might be sick.”

“Toilet’s through the kitchen,” said Oliver faintly, still staring at the box. 

Sam picked up a battered red crowbar that was half-hidden beneath a pile of rubbish. “It looks like they left us something else.”

“Oh no, that’s Jay’s,” said Oliver, “a memorabilia thing. Don’t worry, he won’t mind.”

“Oh, well, alright.” He stood at one end of the box and breathed out slowly. “Let’s do this, then.”

Sam wedged the end of the crowbar underneath the lid of the box, which had been tacked down. With a heave upwards, the lid sprang away from the box. Oliver pushed it onto the floor. 

Without exception, everyone gasped in shock. 

In the box lay a body, identical in every way to Oliver, even down to the freckles on his face. Irving bent closer. It was wearing exactly the same clothes. Even the stains on the clothes were identical. 

“Remarkable…” Sam breathed as he lent over the box. 

The body opened its eyes and sat up. Irving stumbled backwards in shock, into Lucy who fell backwards to the floor, screaming. Peter fainted dead away, slumping onto an armchair behind him. Oliver went white as he looked into the eyes of his doppelganger. 

“What… the… fuck?” both Olivers said. 

Isabel had flattened herself against the wall with her hands covering her mouth. She kept repeating the same thing under her breath. “It’s not real it’s not real it’s not real…”

Constance was holding Peter’s wrist with a shaking hand, counting his pulse under her breath as he started to groggily come around. 

After his initial shock, Irving steeled himself and stepped forward again. “Alright, so this is quite impressive. Let’s have a look at you, lad. There must be a mask or something, let me have a look…”

The Oliver sitting in the box stood up and stepped out onto the carpet. “What? What are you talking about, Irving? I’m the real one!” 

The other Oliver protested, gesturing wildly. “What? No, I admit this is pretty convincing but, come on, guys...”

Irving hesitated. “Well, you’ve got the voice perfectly, I’ll give you that. Come on, take your mask off.”

“Wha- no! I’m telling you, man, I’m the real one!”

“Irving,” Sam said carefully, “we can’t assume we know which is which just because one was inside the box and one was standing outside.” 

Irving groaned. “Aye, you’re right.” He paused for a moment as the Olivers looked at each other in fascination. “Alright, Oliver.”

Both answered, “yes?”

Irving rolled his eyes and pointed. “You, box-Oliver. What were you doing in the box before we took the lid off?”

“Uh. I don’t know. I was asleep, I think.” 

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was tidying up, putting stuff in bin bags- those ones, in fact.” He pointed to the bags by the door. 

“And then?”

“And then I opened my eyes and sat up.”

The other Oliver shook his head. “I remember the whole thing. I was tidying up, then I went outside to meet Peter and Lucy. 

Irving turned to Lucy. “Lucy, what happened when you got here?”

Lucy couldn’t take her eyes off box-Oliver as she replied. “We drove up in the car and Oliver was waiting for us outside.”

“So, door-Oliver,” Irving said, rubbing his forehead, “you have a continuous memory since we last spoke, with no gaps?”

“Yeah, I think so. I spoke to you, did some tidying up, spoke to Jay, then he went out for pizza, then I did some more tidying, then I went outside.”

Box-Oliver interrupted. “That’s the same for me up until going outside.” He looked pensive for a moment and then held up a finger. “Actually, no. There’s another difference. Jay came back, I think. At least, I think it was Jay. Someone was at the door, anyway.”

Isabel stepped forward, pale but in control of herself now. She pulled down the collar of both Olivers’ t-shirts and ran her finger up the neck of each one. “I can’t see where a mask would be.” She stepped back again. “There’s no mask…”

Irving spoke again, growing more agitated. “Alright, when we last went to the pub, what was I drinking?”

“Er…” Both Olivers paused, then spoke at the same time.

“JD.”

“SoCo.”

“What? You’re both wrong,” Irving exclaimed, “I was driving so I didn’t drink. And besides,” he continued, “bourbon? Really?”

Constance rose from her kneeling position beside Peter. “Perhaps we’ll get some answers if we play along with what we’re meant to be doing.” She looked at door-Oliver. “Would you mind getting into the box, Oliver?”

He nodded, sombrely. “Yeah, okay.” Irving noticed that he had started becoming more hesitant compared to the other Oliver. He stepped into the box gingerly. 

Sam’s mouth dropped open for a moment. “You’re not seriously suggesting that we find out which is the real one by weighing them, are you?”

“I don’t know,” replied Constance, curtly, “but it may tell us something. Why else would they take the trouble of putting a set of scales here? What was the weight before?” 

“Ninety-four kilograms,” said Sam. “And I’m coming to the opinion that playing along with their games is not really benefiting us, I have to say.” 

Constance returned her gaze to door-Oliver. “Lie down please, we have to put the lid on.”

He nodded. As he did lay back, a troubled expression crept across his face. 

Irving lifted the lid off the floor. “Don’t worry, kid, it’s not a coffin.” 

Oliver frowned. “Feels like one, though.”

Just as Irving put the lid over him, Oliver spoke one word coloured with sudden melancholy. “Bye…”

Irving rested the lid on top of the box and looked around at the digital display. The reading started to stabilise, then it started to fall. In a couple of seconds, it had fallen to fifteen kilograms. 

Irving flung the lid off onto the floor. The box was empty. 

“ _ Oh shit _ .”

Some of them screamed. Others just stared in horror. Peter started to hyperventilate, crossing himself and babbling under his racing breath. 

Isabel reached forward and felt the bottom of the box with her hand. “What did we just see?” she said, voice trembling. 

She lifted the box up off the floor. It was unquestionably empty, and there was nothing underneath it apart from the scales. She lifted up the scales too, but they were unremarkable. There was no method of escape. She looked around at the others frantically. 

“Constance? Irving? You’re scientists, what did we just see?” 

Irving looked at Constance. She was staring at the box, her mouth working but saying nothing. He looked back at Isabel and shrugged. “I don’t have an answer, lass.” 

Oliver was biting the knuckle of his index finger. “How do I know that I’m the real one?”

“Come, now,” Sam said, “don’t get yourself worked up over this. It’s important to keep perspective. This was just a magic trick, after all.”

Constance sucked air through her teeth. “I don’t know, Sam.”She shook her head. “This time, it’s…”

“Constance, you can’t possibly be saying that what we just witnessed was real?”

“‘When you eliminate the impossible…’”

“But magic tricks always appear impossible. You can’t trust what you’re being shown.”

“How then, Sam? How did Oliver disappear into thin air when he was inside the box?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a magician.”

“Listen,” Irving said, “both of you. There’s no sense in rushing to a conclusion. The truth is that we do not have an explanation for any of this. If we say either that it’s some kind of magic trick or that it isn’t, both of those statements rely on knowledge that we don’t have. We need more information. We don’t know what we just saw.”

Sam replied, almost angry. “Are you applying quantum reasoning to this, Irving? Are we to just be satisfied with saying that it was both a trick and supernatural at the same time? That’s not an acceptable argument.”

“Acceptable?”

Constance interjected. “Hey, you two, it’s a small room. You don’t need to raise your voices.”

Irving grimaced. “There’s no possible mechanism that I can think of that would produce the effect that we saw. Well, apart from a quantum fluctuation, of course, but that’s basically akin to saying that it was magic.” He rubbed his eyes. “All the answers lie with them.” 

He paused. An idea had sprung into his mind. He began to grin. “And I’ve got an idea about where to start looking.”


	8. Behind the Railway Tunnel

They sat in The Ship in subdued silence. The place was relatively empty, its usual hubbub just a murmur of hushed conversations and the occasional clink of glass. Sam stared into his pint, watching the bubbles that streamed up to the surface in unbroken columns or crept furtively up the side. They formed around microscopic irregularities in the face of the glass, or at least that’s what he had heard. Yet these unseen structures were real enough to cause effects large enough to be seen with the naked eye. 

He found himself muttering under his breath. 

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”

“What was that, Sam?” asked Constance. 

“Oh, nothing. What were we talking about?”

“I think we were all waiting for Irving to share his master plan with us.” 

Irving returned from the bar, sat down at the table and took his first sip of whisky. After a contemplative pause, he nodded to himself and turned his attention to the table. “Alright, so here’s what I think. What we thought before, about it being some kind of marketing thing, TV show or prank just feels wrong. There’s been illegal stuff, weird stuff with the bones in the wood, and that inexplicable shit in Oliver’s flat. We don’t know who these people are, what they want or why they’re interested in us. It feels to me that if we don’t start to do something proactive, we might never get to the bottom of this - before, that is, they achieve whatever it is they’re trying to do.”

“But what could that be?” asked Lucy. 

Irving shook his head. “Don’t know, and I dinnae think I want to find out.”

“But what can we do?” Peter said, an edge of frustration in his voice. 

Constance smiled. “He’s got a plan, I can see it on his face.”

“it’s just an idea,” Irving said. “Cast your minds back to the first time we all got a message. We were all on a train waiting in the tunnel outside Exeter Central.”

“That’s right,” said Oliver. 

Irving nodded. “We shouldn’t have had a signal there but somehow we received messages. So that means that there must have been another radio source within the tunnel. A small transmitter that our phones all connected to.” 

“Of course,” said Constance, “the police have them to intercept messages.”

Irving leaned forward conspiratorially. “Behind the walls of the tunnel there are chambers, built when the Victorian engineers constructed the tunnel. They could be reached from within the tunnel itself, but that’d be dangerous and besides, there’s another way in.” 

He pulled out his phone and laid it on the table. He brought up a map of Exeter and started zooming into the centre. “There’s a shaft that goes down into the chambers here. I only know about it because it’s in the grounds of a school I did some supply work at once. If I remember correctly, there’s a hatch that’s padlocked, but I’ve got some bolt-cutters in my garage.” 

“So it’s trespassing on railway property this time, then?” Sam asked. 

“Aye, technically. But the chambers aren’t actually used for anything. The locks are there to keep idiots from hurting themselves down there.”

“Idiots like us, you mean.” Oliver’s eyes were sparkling with excitement. “I am  _ so _ on board with this plan. When do we go?” 

“Well, I have to get my bolt-cutters, so it’ll have to be tomorrow.”

Sam bit his lip in reticence. Law-breaking, even in such a way as this where there was no victim apart from themselves, was an alien experience to him, one that he felt no need to become accustomed to. “Erm, I must point out that they have had plenty of time to clear up any equipment they may have used.”

“True, maybe we’ll find nothing. Maybe I’m wrong and they used some other method of somehow getting all our phones to receive a message at once, but this seems like the most straightforward way of achieving it.” 

Lucy nodded. “Okay. But I think we should do it tonight.”

The others turned to her. “Tonight?” Sam asked. 

“Yeah. Think about it. It seems like they’ve been watching our houses to put stuff in laundry; they’re monitoring our  _ supposedly  _ secure instant messaging. We’ve been meeting at this table for more than a week. It seems unlikely that they’re not listening to us right now.”

Irving sat back in his chair. “Fuck, you’re right.”

As everyone furtively looked around for microphones or people listening to them on other tables, Sam couldn’t stop a wry smile creeping over his lips. “Don’t worry, everyone. I’m sure that if they are listening to us, they’ll have done it in such a way that would appear to be impossible.”

Irving smiled and sipped his whisky. “Aye.”

Oliver stood up. “Lucy’s right. We need to go now. I’ve picked locks in the past. I’ll give this one a go.”

Sam quickly finished his pint and pulled his coat on as he stood up. They probably weren’t in any danger, he thought to himself. If the messengers had been there, they were probably long gone by now. 

*****

They huddled in a group on Haldon Road under two ash trees, next to the fence. The leaves rustled softly in the crisp night air as they spoke in hushed tones. The school grounds were on a slightly higher level than the pavement they were standing on. A wall of concrete breezeblocks had been built to stop the bank from eroding away onto the road. Oliver stood on top of it, looking through the fence into the small enclosure owned by Network Rail. 

“I can see the hatch,” he said. 

Irving pulled himself up onto the wall beside Oliver. “Ach, the gate into the enclosure is on the other side. We’ll have to break into the school grounds.”

“Aha, not so fast, Irving,” Oliver said, “look here.”

He pointed to where the wire mesh of the fence joined a metal upright, just in front of them. “See this bit? Someone’s been through here before.” The bindings tying the mesh to the frame had been surreptitiously broken, allowing a section of the mesh pushed back. 

“Well, well…” said Irving. “Perhaps we’re on the right track, after all.”

Oliver had crawled halfway through the fence before he realised. He stopped and looked back at Irving over his shoulder. “Was… was that a pun, Irving?”

“Aye, but let’s not make a scene out of it, get ye through yon fence, lad.”

“Just took me by surprise, that’s all.” Oliver held the wire mesh open for Irving to pass, who in turn held it open for the others to pass while Oliver turned his attention to the hatch. 

It was a square of solid steel, scattered with patches of rust like fallen leaves. There was a handle on side and a large hinge on the other. A large padlock was secured through a ring that held it to the ground. He took out his lockpicks and started to investigate it. 

It was a difficult one, more of a challenge than any he’d attempted in the past. He’d bought the lockpicks mostly for the sake of curiosity, then only subsequently had he had cause to use them when he started becoming interested in Urban Exploration. 

After a few minutes of trying, some of the others were starting to get nervous. Lucy paced up and down and Sam was standing next to one of the ash trees, almost invisible in the darkness. Irving hovered over his shoulder, watching his every mistake. 

“Do you do this to all your students, Irving?” Oliver asked. 

“Sorry. I’m just nervous.” He stepped back. 

After another tense few moments, the lock clicked open. Oliver took a full breath for the first time in minutes. 

“Right, let’s see what’s down here.” 

The hatch made no noise as he lifted it. Oliver could see oil on the hinge that must have been applied recently. He lifted it all the way over and rested it on the ground, fully open. 

The hatch had been covering a square vertical shaft about a metre across going straight down into total darkness. The walls of the shaft were old victorian brickwork, once rich brown and amber now stained with vertical green streaks and grey deposits of salt. Metal rungs were sunk into one wall forming a ladder. 

Oliver shone his phone flashlight down the shaft. “Damn, should have brought the head torch again. Would have been perfect.” The white beam of his phone’s light didn’t reach the bottom of the shaft. 

Everyone gathered to look down. 

“This ladder looks dangerous,” Irving said, “is everyone going to be okay going down?”

“I’ll go first,” Oliver said, “I’ll shout up if it gets any worse.”

He swung his legs over the edge and began climbing down. Although the metal rungs had looked slippery, the climb was easier than it had looked. It took him about a minute to reach the bottom of the ladder. 

He came to the bottom of the shaft abruptly, extending his foot downwards towards another rung and instead striking a dirt-covered floor. He retrieved his phone and turned the flashlight back on. He was in a brick-lined chamber about four metres wide, six or seven metres long and perhaps three metres tall, with a vaulted ceiling. The stale-smelling air was so completely still that it felt as if nothing had disturbed it in decades. The chamber must have flooded at some point in the past, as there was a layer of fine silt on the floor that had partially covered some of the smaller pieces of rubble left over from the construction of the tunnel. There was a doorway in the far corner of the room that led into another chamber. 

He listened for a moment. An occasional drip of water into a puddle somewhere around the corner echoed dully in the small space. Somewhere far off, there was the squeal of a train on railway tracks. 

Oliver flashed the light up the shaft and shouted to the others. “It’s okay, come down!” 

As the rest of the group climbed down, Oliver looked into the next chamber. It was just as the first, with the same dimensions and a similarly vaulted ceiling and another doorway leading deeper into the structure. 

Isabel hissed at him as she stepped off the ladder. “Hey, don’t go off without us!”

Just as he was about to reply, a slight movement caught his eye by the other door. A deeper black shape in the dark doorway. He flashed his torch back over to it, but whatever it was had gone. 

“What’s through there?” Isabel asked excitedly, bounding up to join him. 

“I…” Oliver began in a hushed voice, “I might have just seen someone.”

Isabel tensed immediately. She stood ready by the doorway, hidden from the next room as Oliver swept his torch around. 

Once everyone was down, Oliver moved into the next room and shone his light into the third chamber. It was identical to the second and the first, with the same vaulted ceiling and victorian brickwork. There was no other doorway out of this one. There was no-one in this chamber. 

“Oh,” he said. “This is the end.”

“What?” said Peter, “this can’t be all there is, surely.” He walked into the third chamber and started inspecting the walls, running his hands across the brickwork. “There’s got to be something, some secret doorway, or-”

As he stepped along the wall he caught his foot on a piece of debris and tripped, falling heavily on his right hand. He screamed in pain. 

Oliver was closest. He sprang to Peter’s side and helped him back to his feet. “Oh shit, Peter! Are you hurt?” 

Peter cursed vividly. “It’s my finger. Fuck, I think it’s broken.”

“Shit. Okay, this party’s over, we need to get you to a hospital. Do you think you can make the climb?”

“Yeah, yeah I can do it.”

“Okay.” Oliver rubbed his face. “Damn, this was a disaster.”

*****

The bright fluorescent striplights of the hospital waiting areas felt more and more merciless the further the hour got from sunset. In the static, windowless room full of quiet, restless people waiting to be called, it felt as if they were trapped in a moment in time. 

Constance had driven Peter to the hospital and was waiting with him now until he had his x-ray results back. Although she felt compelled to help, she couldn’t stop thinking of her bed. The others had gone their separate ways after climbing out of the shaft. Not many words had passed between them. Irving’s plan had seemed like a chance to finally take some control of their situation and its failure had left Constance feeling increasingly helpless. 

After an amount of time staring at the ceiling that Constance couldn’t quite quantify, Peter’s name was called. His X-Ray results had been seen by a doctor.

After a few minutes, Peter came back smiling. 

“Not broken! Just a really bad sprain.”

“Oh that’s great, Peter!” Constance stood up and went to hug him before stopping herself. “Oh, sorry! Mustn’t touch the hand.”

“Er, yes. Still painful. Got to elevate it and lay off the golf for a while. And the work as well, I suppose.”

Constance picked up her coat. “Right, let’s get you home.” 

As they emerged out of the hospital into the cool darkness of the night, a vivid memory flashed into Constance’s mind. 

_ She was stepping down off the last rung of the ladder when Isabel had hushed everyone to silence.  _

_ “Do you hear that?” _

_ None of them breathed for a moment. They could hear the crump of footsteps in soft silt, somewhere further in.  _

_ Sam called out, “hey, is there someone there?” _

_ No answer came. The footsteps seemed to be coming closer.  _

_ Oliver flashed his torch into the next room and led the way with Isabel next to him, arms up and ready to defend herself. Constance followed right behind them, her heart in her throat, flicking her flashlight beam this way and that at the shadows.  _

_ They had all passed into the second room and were moving toward the doorway to the third when there was suddenly another man in the room, as if he’d stepped out of a shadow.  _

_ His pupils of his eyes were dark and his stare was unblinking. He was tall and wide, in a large waxed coat and wide-brimmed hat, with a voluminous grey beard. His coat and hat were stained with white bird droppings and the room began to fill with their powerful stench, combined with the acrid smell of a man long-unwashed. The skin of his hands and face was wrinkled and thin, mottled with age. Constance’s gaze was drawn back to his eyes, two deep pits, behind which there seemed no light.  _

_ There was shock and alarm at his sudden appearance. Irving, closest to him, nearly stumbled and fell. The rest variously gasped or screamed. Sam was the first to respond in a calm manner and he began to question the man.  _

_ “Who are you? Are you the one behind the messages?” He spoke quickly, his voice shrill.  _

_ The old man turned to look him in the eye. He spoke slowly in a thick local accent, with his deep voice hoarse as if he hadn’t used it in days. “You shouldn’ be ‘ere. Not yet. Yerr not ready.” _

_ “Ready? What do you mean, ready?” _

_ The old man continued staring at Sam. His gaze was unnervingly empty. He didn’t answer. Isabel took a step closer to him, in front of Constance. “How have you done the things that you’ve done? You have to tell us!” _

_ The old man turned his gaze upon her and smiled. More than half of his teeth were black, the rest a sickly yellow. “You’ll know. Soon. Not now. You shouldn’ be ‘ere.” He repeated the words with exactly the same intonation.  _

_ Constance remembered rubbing her neck. It felt tight, as if she were wearing a restrictive collared shirt, but her blouse was only loosely buttoned.  _

_ “What?” Irving spat, exasperated, “what on earth are you talking about, man? Why are you doing this to us?”  _

_ The old man looked him dead in the eye. “You’ll know, soon.” The same intonation, again. Irving seemed to take an involuntary step back.  _

_ Lucy accosted him, face fierce with indignation. “What about the message on the wall? How did you do that? The box in the woods? And the girl? Who’s the girl? What about the cards? What do the cards mean?” _

_ The man seemed taken aback, the first time he’d shown any sort of discernable emotion. “What? Girl? Cards?” _

_ Peter stepped forward then, raising his fist and wagging a finger in the man’s face. “I’ve had just about enough of this, mate. You’re going to tell us exactly what you’ve been doing and why, right bloody now!”  _

_ The old man shook his head slowly. “Yerr not ready. You ‘ave to go.” _

_ Peter was unrelenting. “We are not leaving until we are satisfied, you flea-bitten, fetid bastard!” _

_ The old man looked at Peter’s wagging finger. Peter abruptly stopped talking and drew his hand back, grunting in pain. “Argh, jeez- what the fff-”  _

_ He looked at his finger in speechless horror as it bent itself all the way back parallel to the back of his hand. He staggered backwards, screaming in agony. The old man stepped back into a shadow and vanished.  _

A car beeped its horn next to Constance, startling her. She and Peter were standing in the middle of the car park. A man put his head out of the window of the car they were obstructing. “Excuse me, do you mind?” 

They got into Constance’s car and sat in silence for a moment. Constance spoke first. 

“Do you remember-”

“A man,” Peter said, immediately. “With black eyes.”

They were silent again. Constance felt a tightening sensation around her throat again. 

“Why… why am I only just remembering this?”

“He bent my finger back by looking at it...” Peter breathed. “How did he get in and out of the room?”

Constance exhaled unsteadily, trying to force down a rising tide of panic. “I’m not sure I want to know the answers any more.”

*****

_ Constance: Anyone still awake? _

_ Sam: Yeah _

_ Constance: We just all remembered something _

_ Sam: The man _

_ Isabel: We had it too _

_ Isabel: Just now, we both were talking and we just kind of saw it _

_ Sam: Just to be clear that we’re talking about the same thing - there was a man who appeared in the chamber, told us to leave and bent Peter’s finger backwards with his eyes _

_ Oliver: Wow, it’s exactly the same _

_ Oliver: Are you still with Peter, Constance? _

_ Constance: Yeah, Irving’s driving us back _

_ Constance: Peter’s finger isn’t broken, just sprained _

_ Constance: They both say hi _

_ Oliver: Jeez, some sprain _

_ Oliver: His fingernail touched his wrist _

_ Lucy: Glad it’s not broken Peter _

_ Lucy: I just had the most horrible dream _

_ Lucy: We were in the chamber and there was a weird man there _

_ Oliver: Scroll up, Lucy _

_ Lucy: Oh god _

_ Constance: What is happening to us? _

_ Sam: Lucy, you were asleep when you experienced this? _

_ Lucy: Yes _

_ Oliver: It’s at least three impossible things to add to the list _

_ Sam: Interesting _

_ Sam: @Oliver Or perhaps one _

_ Sam: In my mind I honestly can’t tell the difference between the two versions of event _

_ Sam: They both seem like real memories _

_ Sam: We have no way of knowing which were the real events _

_ Sam: If our original memories were real, then they didn’t contain anything supernatural _

_ Sam: And the only impossible event would be all of us ‘remembering’ the same thing at the same time _

_ Lucy: Then that’s seven impossible things, Sam _

_ Sam: Shit _

_ Sam: Nothing gets past you, Lucy _

_ Irving: i can think of one way to find out _

_ Constance: I don’t think that’s a good idea _

_ Irving: we go back _

_ Lucy: I’m going _

_ Sam: Yes _

_ Sam: Me too _

_ Constance: I don’t think you should! _

_ Constance: What if he does something worse this time???? _

_ Oliver: Isabel and I are staying put, but keep us updated _

_ Constance: Everyone! Please don’t go! _

*****

Sam held his coat tightly around him to ward off the cold night wind as he walked quickly up Haldon Road. He was really on edge this time, more disturbed than he had been in years. As soon as he’d decided to go back to the chamber, he’d flung his coat on over his dressing gown and pajamas and headed straight out of the door. All the while as he walked, his mind had been racing. There was no explanation for any of this. Their tormentors seemed to be intent on stripping their reason from them day by day, driving them slowly mad. 

Had he been experiencing this on his own, he certainly would have taken himself to get professional help long before now. But the fact that they were all experiencing the same things was utterly baffling. It precluded madness on the part of any individual. Unless all of them apart from him were in on the deception and it was all targeted at himself. Sam hadn’t totally discarded that option. But they all seemed so genuine, they would have to be supremely good actors intent on doing serious mental harm. It didn’t feel right. 

Sam gritted his teeth against the sheer impenetrable abstruseness of it all. Some part of his brain was crying out just to give up, to say that he was beaten and just to plead for it to all end. The brain can only take so much cognitive dissonance before real damage starts being done. He felt the defense mechanism working in his mind, trying to protect him by suppressing the impossible things that he’d seen. Forgetting, rationalising, magical thinking, these are the tools the brain uses to keep itself functioning when confronted with the unfathomable ragged edges of existence. 

Sam fought back with curiosity. He wasn’t going to be beaten like this. 

He turned the corner to find Irving and Lucy waiting under the tree where they had gathered a few hours before. He nodded to them as he approached. Few words passed between them. Last time they had come here full of hope and fear, but this time, Sam saw his determination reflected in the lines of their shadowed faces. A frantic ripost in the face of a relentless attack on their reason. 

Irving pushed through the fence first and made straight for the hatch. This time he had his bolt-cutters. He knelt down next to the hatch and frowned.

“He hasn’t re-locked it,” he breathed. 

The opened padlock hadn’t been moved from when Oliver had set it aside after picking it. 

Sam stood behind Irving as he gripped the handle to lift the hatch. Lucy stood to the side, arms folded around herself, looking down at the hatch as if it might admit a dangerous animal when lifted. 

Irving lifted the hatch. Then he almost dropped it in shock. 

Underneath, there was no shaft leading down into the dark. There was only an unbroken slab of concrete. They stood looking at it for a long moment, dumbfounded. 

Irving stamped on it heavily. The impact sounded dull. The concrete was thick and solid. 

Lucy groaned. “Oh god. No… He’s done it to us again.” She put her head in her hands. 

Sam shook his head, trying to tamp down rising panic. “Could- could he have filled it in so quickly?”

“No,” said Irving, “concrete takes days to set.”

Sam bent down slowly and ran his hand across it. The concrete was smooth and unblemished, as if it had just been poured. He stood back up and took a photo of the concrete with his phone. 

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, grimly. 

Irving lowered the hatch back down, a thunderous expression on his face. He growled something under his breath that Sam didn’t quite catch. 

“What did you say, Irving?”

“Nothing. Fucking nothing.”


	9. Awakenings, Pt I

Constance locked the door of her apartment and elbowed the light switch. With a plink, the element in the incandescent bulb in the ceiling flashed and then rapidly faded like an ember removed from the fire. She sighed and slung her bag down onto the sofa in the gentle moonlight. She kicked her shoes off and pulled off her blazer before running her fingers through her hair with a deep breath. It was past midnight and her limbs were trembling with tiredness. 

_ Tea.  _

She knew it might keep her awake a little longer but she needed it. The tranquil ritual of preparation and the meditative wait as it cooled before drinking. Tea. It would help. As her hands worked by themselves to boil the kettle and measure the leaves, she tried to keep from concentrating on the events of the night, but without success. Much as she hated to admit it, the combination of the mystery and the horror was utterly spellbinding to her. Normal people didn’t poke dead bodies for a living and much as she tried to pretend otherwise, she wasn’t normal. 

She found herself staring at the wall as the kettle finished boiling. 

_ Stop it, Constance. _

She poured the water over the leaves, set the kettle down and picked up the jar of tea. She inhaled the rich, earthy aroma from its dark interior as she watched the vapour rise from the steeping leaves, breathing slowly and deeply. In and out. She closed her eyes. 

She knew where it came from, this morbid curiosity. But she didn’t like thinking about her sister. At least she’d been able to turn it to something useful to others. Communing with the dead to give answers to the living was one of the oldest occupations, after all. She just used a scalpel instead of incense. 

She picked the strainer out of her teacup and added a dash of milk, turning the tea from the colour of dark glass to rich mahogany. She held it close as she walked slowly to the window to look out on sleeping Exeter. 

From her window, she actually couldn’t see much of the city. Most of the view was of the opposite wing of her apartment building. Some of the lights were still on in windows and she could see one or two people moving around. Above, the night sky was black, any starlight obliterated by light pollution. A little of the city was visible on the left side and beyond that, in the distance, the darkness of the countryside. 

She sipped her tea a little and returned her gaze to the illuminated windows opposite. In one, Constance saw a young woman, standing on a chair, reaching above her head for something. Constance squinted. Then she shivered. The woman had long dark hair and was wearing a white dress. Just like the woman on Oliver’s video in the woods. 

Constance leaned closer to the window. 

_ What is she doing- _

The cup of tea fell from Constance’s hands to smash on the floor, unnoticed, as she watched the woman kick the chair away from underneath her to swing suspended by her neck. 

Dashing out of her door, Constance sprinted full pelt for the stairs. Her socks skidded on the smooth floor as she rounded the corner and took the steps three at a time. 

_ Down three floors! Then across! _

She hit the floor at a dead run and sprinted along the hallway of the building’s central section and into the main foyer. 

There was no-one at the main desk. 

_ Fuck! _

She took off again, sprinting for the south wing stairs. There was no time to search for the guard and his key. She’d have to break the door down. 

_ I’ve only got seconds! _

Her lungs were bursting as she reached the top of the stairs. It was the third window. The third window… She turned right down the corridor and cannoned into a man coming out of his doorway, knocking them both sprawling on the floor. Constance didn’t have time to apologise. 

“Come with me!”

The man spluttered as he got to his feet. “Wha- what?”

“Help me break this door down!” She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him down the corridor. 

“Now wait just a minute-”

“She’s hanging herself! It’s this one! Go!”

“Oh, okay!” His eyes were wide with shock now. 

She put an arm around his waist. “We’re both going to run at the door, okay? Ready?”

“Ye-”

“Go!”

They both held each other and barrelled into the door, shoulders first. The old wooden doorframe burst, showering splinters of wood over the floor as they crashed through, stumbling over each other. 

The woman was still swinging gently from side to side, suspended by a length of thick cord wound around a pipe on the ceiling. Her arms and legs twitched and her eyes stared madly from her blue face. 

The man gasped. “Jenny!”

He grabbed her legs and lifted her upwards, taking the weight off her neck as Constance snatched a bread knife from the block in the kitchen. She jumped onto the chair the woman had stood on and frantically sawed at the cord. It frayed mercilessly slowly until finally it parted and the woman fell limply over the man’s shoulder. Constance threw the knife away and leapt down from the chair. 

“Okay, ease her down to the floor now, carefully…”

The man laid the woman down on the floor as breath came back to her in tortured, ragged wheezes. Constance did what she could to keep her airway as open as possible while the man called the ambulance. 

A few minutes later, as the paramedics carried the woman out of the apartment on a stretcher, her face in a breathing mask and dark bruises blooming on her neck, Constance sank back against the wall of the corridor, sliding down to sit awkwardly on the floor. 

The man came out of her apartment and sat down beside her. She looked at him appraisingly for the first time. He had a shaven head and blue eyes. He smelt vaguely of incense and was wearing a thick jumper with a rough texture and an earthy colour that reminded her of one she’d bought in Glastonbury once. 

He held out a hand. “Hi, I’m Michael.”

She shook it weakly. “Constance. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise, Constance. I wish it were in better circumstances.”

“Yeah.” She yawned. “Sorry, I am just absolutely wrecked.”

“Yes, of course. Can I get you anything? I could make you some tea if you’d like?” 

“Sorry, I’m just going to go straight back to my flat, thanks. As soon as I get up. In a minute.”

“Of course, absolutely.” He nodded, thoughtfully. “So, you saw Jenny from outside?”

“My flat is opposite.”

“Ah, right, of course. Well, you did an amazing thing.”

Constance smiled weakly. “You were pretty good yourself.”

He shrugged and shook his head. “I didn’t do much.” He stood up and offered her his hand. “If you’d like, I can walk you back to your flat. The caretaker will be along to sort out Jenny’s door in a minute.”

She accepted his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “Thanks.” 

They walked back to her apartment slowly, their footsteps echoing in the quiet hallways. 

“So,” she said, “do you know her?”

“Jenny? Not really. We’ve said hello a couple of times in the hallway. I had no idea she was… well, she seemed happy enough when I saw her.” 

“Unfortunately that’s no indication of-” Constance stopped in her tracks as Jenny’s face appeared in her mind’s eye. Her mouth dropped open. 

“She… she had blonde hair…”

Michael looked at her, perplexed. “...Yes, that’s right.”

“But- but I was sure she had dark hair…” Constance rubbed her eyes. “Oh god I need to sleep.”

*****

The afternoon breeze felt cool on Irving’s face as he walked briskly out of the school gates towards his favourite smoking spot. Across the road and around the corner to lean against a lovely old red brick wall under a rustling tree. It was frowned upon by the headmaster, but indulging in a small rebellion like this earned Irving a modicum of street cred among the pupils. If that helped him control them in class, so much the better. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that his habit might tempt any of them into smoking themselves. All they had to do was take one look at him and see what it led to. A middle-aged man wretchedly puffing on cigarettes just for something to do until he died. 

He pulled the packet out of his jacket and tapped it. He’d had this one for a while, now. The edges had become worn from abrading against the lining of his pocket. In fact, he hadn’t smoked much recently. Hardly at all, come to think of it. This business with the messages had somehow filled a hole in his life he hadn’t realised was there. 

He hadn’t hooked up with Annabel recently, either; hadn’t even messaged her. She hadn’t messaged him, either. He didn’t know what that meant. 

He stared at the cigarette sticking halfway out of the packet. 

He hadn’t even really thought about Annabel, and that was something. The mystery messages had taken up all of his spare thoughts. They now had a face to put to the anonymous messages. That was a victory, even though almost everything that they had done had been anticipated. It was maddening, but it was only  _ almost _ everything. The old man didn’t seem to have expected them to find where he was hiding. That meant that he was fallible. Not only that, despite the seemingly impossible things that he’d done to them, Irving had applied logic to one of his tricks and it had led to an answer. That meant that they weren’t living in some ever-shifting nightmare where there were no rules and no escape. There were rules. They just had to find out what they were. 

“Hi.”

Irving flinched and dropped the packet onto the ground. A young woman was standing next to him, looking into his eyes with an almost insufferably beatific expression. She was holding a book of some kind. 

“Er, hi,” he said as he bent down to pick up his cigarettes. “Can I help you?” 

She smiled. “I was wondering if I could help you? You seem troubled.”

“Thanks, but…” Irving’s mouth dropped open for a moment. She had long dark hair running down past the shoulders of her white dress, chestnut eyes and a vaguely southern-european complexion. Exactly the same as the girl in the woods on Oliver’s video. 

She was offering him a leaflet. He took it. 

“If you feel in need of guidance, remember that the divine is always there.” She smiled again as she walked off down the street. 

“Um… thanks.” Irving looked down at the leaflet. 

It was a pamphlet for a local presbyterian church. The word woke old memories in him, of his childhood in Scotland and the austere services at his father’s church. Throughout his adolescence, he had sought refuge from the suffocating religiosity of his family in his study of science. At least, he had felt suffocated by it at the time. The dreary world of church-groups and prayer held no answers for a teenager whose mind was chasing the wonder of quantum mechanics. But despite all of the stuffy ritual, or perhaps because of it, he had to admit there had been some kind of magic in the church. A deep stillness not found outside those walls that was nevertheless sparkling with hints of something untouchable. Like the virtual particles popping in and out of existence in a vacuum. 

Irving looked back to the girl again, but she had already turned the corner. 

_ No. Couldn’t have been her. Ach, don’t start getting paranoid, MacLeod.  _

He looked down at the packet of cigarettes in his hand, at the single stick peeking out from it, enticingly. He bit his lip, pushed it back in and shoved the packet back into his jacket. He sunk his hands into his pockets as he walked back to the school gates. 

He walked through the grounds to the science building. He went to the staff lab, the one place in the school that he would very seldom be disturbed. Here was where he prepared substances for use in class and increasingly, where he performed experiments of his own. 

Experiments were a form of relaxation for him, he had found. The reactions that he was able to perform here were child’s play compared to his work at the university, of course, but the simple, meditative act of preparing the vessels and measuring the reagents was soothing. Watching the reaction take place was a tiny piece of magic. The combination of watching a colour change, a phase change, or the release of heat or light combined with his knowledge of what was happening made Irving feel as if he commanded the deepest secrets of reality. 

He looked at the reagents in the cupboard, searching for inspiration, for something to distract him from the deep unease he was feeling. 

_ Magnesium strips... saltpeter... _

_ No. _

But the idea had already appeared in his mind. He had the reagents for it. It could be useful, if he could find a suitable container. If the old man came for him, he wasn’t just going to take it lying down. He’d just have to be careful with it. Really careful. He’d just make a small one. 

Still, he hesitated. He looked at his watch. He had half an hour. 

_ This is probably a  _ really _ bad idea… ach, screw it.  _

He took out the jar of saltpeter, the magnesium and the other things he would need to make the flashbang. 

*****

Oliver woke late. Very late. One blink of his eyes told him that the sunlight was starting to creep across the floor of his west-facing bedroom. He opened them to stare at the patterns of reflected light on the textured ceiling. 

The house was quiet. Even Jay was out, or the noise of his computer would have been audible through the thin wall. As he lay immersed in silence, Oliver felt himself drifting back towards sleep. He loved the state between waking and sleeping. He would begin a train of thought and as he followed it, it would grow steadily more bizarre as his brain unwound itself from its rigid grip on reality. Most of the time, people didn’t remember it as they fell straight through into unconsciousness, but the trick was to try to retain a degree of lucidity, to drag oneself back up a little before falling too deeply into sleep. 

For the first time in a long time, he thought about his future. The subject always made him uncomfortable but today he felt he couldn’t escape it. He preferred to live in the present. Going through life trying to second guess yourself was no way to live. Just do what feels right. At first, he had felt that it was a philosophy that allowed the easiest passage through life and when he’d come to university in Exeter he’d fully embraced it. His parents had been disappointed when he’d dropped out, but he’d reassured them that it wasn’t the right path for him. His philosophy wasn’t the path of least resistance, he kept telling himself. It was different to that. He jumped off buildings for fun, for example. He just did what felt right. 

However, he did feel a growing doubt. A sense that in some way, he was missing something that he couldn’t put his finger on. That perhaps his ad hoc exploration of life had missed something vital. 

The hypnagogic state was eluding him. He rolled onto his side and fumbled for his phone. There was a message. He opened it excitedly only to find that it was from his friend Lee inviting him to hang out. He almost put the phone down, but then he glanced something further on in the message. 

_ Hey man, we met some dude Maxwell who’s gonna film some parkour stuff with us, also Joe says he met a crazy hot chick who’s coming too and bringing her dog, i said ok whatevs dude but then i saw her and its like woh shit gal gadot, anyway wanna come? its that old factory we tagged last time _

Oliver texted back immediately.  _ Yes.  _


	10. Awakenings, Pt II

Long shadows moved slowly across the flat roof of the old factory as the sun touched the horizon, lighting the clouds in gold and saffron. The red bricks of the building glowed in the honey-coloured light. 

While the light was beautiful, they only had a few minutes left before it got too dark to film. They had been filming with the new guy Maxwell for a couple of hours now. To Oliver’s consternation, the girl with the dog hadn’t shown up. Joe hadn’t shown up either, saying he’d had to do ‘a thing’. Oliver asked about the girl, but Lee said that he’d only seen a photo of her on Joe’s phone. 

The physical and mental activity of parkour had raised his spirits considerably, however. For the first time in days he felt like he was properly enjoying himself. 

He landed a somersault over a railing and carried on running. Maxwell was keeping up, abreast of him with his camera held low. Oliver was about to make the final jump over a skylight but then pulled up short, shaking his head. It wasn’t a long jump, but a dangerous one. The ancient wooden window frame was rotten and almost no glass was left in it, so it opened directly into the crumbling factory below. Oliver looked down. There was a patch of foliage underneath the window, watered by rainfall, growing out of cracks in the floor. It was a fall of more than five metres, so the jump was not something Oliver wanted to get wrong. 

“Ah, sorry guys. I had my footing wrong. Let’s try that again.” 

Maxwell nodded. He seemed quite reserved and not at all what Oliver had expected. He looked bookish in his suit jacket, jeans, and thick glasses. He didn’t seem particularly fit, either. Just running alongside Oliver had him puffing and sweating. Oliver walked alongside him back to the start of the run. 

“So, you done much of this before?” he asked. 

“No,” Maxwell said, “not really.”

“What turned you on to it?”

“Well, this’ll probably sound weird, but I’m interested in the lines. The ways of interacting with architecture, of moving through the environment. The way you use the environment is totally different to the way that the architect imagined, yet it’s so fluid, so free. It’s fascinating.”

Oliver agreed. He’d often thought about that. Urban street sports like parkour or street skating were direct communions with the urban environment that made you appreciate it in completely different ways. The handrail, stair or ledge that the everyday city dweller might dismiss as banal or even ugly was instead recognised for its effect on its environment and how it related to the other objects within it. In turn, the beauty of the urban environment was in its composition and how that composition affected the people within it. 

They reached the starting point of the run deep in conversation. Lee tapped his foot. “Hey professors, we’re losing the light here. I think this might be the last run.”

Oliver focussed. “Okay, I’m ready.”

He set off. First a leapfrog jump over a squat air vent into a roll underneath a pipe. Small stones on the hard surface of the roof jabbed into his back as he rolled. He stood up, sprinted and slid across a metal box. Then a drop, up a short set of metal steps and a somersault over the railing to the ground. As his foot left the metal mesh, he felt as if he were flying for the briefest of moments. He curled up to spin into a three point landing. His feet met the ground perfectly. The painful shock in his shins and knees didn’t throw him off balance this time. From the crouch, it was a short sprint to the skylight. Oliver planted his foot on the ledge just before it and leapt. 

There was a tug on his foot and Oliver realised mid-jump that the toe of his shoe had snagged on something. His body arced helplessly downwards, straight through the skylight. He smashed through the brittle wooden frame and fell with the splinters toward the factory floor. 

*****

Oliver twisted like a cat in mid air as time slowed to a crawl. He flipped over, just managing to get his feet underneath him before he hit the floor. The impact took his breath away, but as he lay on the ground, winded and trying to work air back into his lungs, he marvelled that he hadn’t hurt himself more seriously. 

He looked up at the skylight. It seemed far further away than he had thought, a small rectangle of brightness in a dark ceiling. He struggled to his feet, gingerly testing for broken bones as he did so. Satisfied, he stood up fully and took in his surroundings for the first time with surprise. He was standing in a forest of weeds and brambles, taller than him, that he didn’t remember seeing when he looked down from above. There seemed to be a path ahead of him, leading deeper into the factory. 

He looked back up at the skylight. He couldn’t see anyone looking down. He shouted up anyway. 

“I think I’m okay! I’m going to try to find the exit! Don’t bother calling an ambulance!”

There was no reply. They must have already gone to find a way in. 

When Oliver looked back down, there was a small dog sitting on the path through the brambles. Inexplicably, Oliver had the impression that it had been waiting for him. It looked exactly like the dog that he’d seen with the girl in white. 

_ Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought.  _

In response to his puzzled gaze, the dog got up and walked further down the path. Oliver followed cautiously, trying to avoid the brambles. The light was fading fast now, and the rest of the huge room not directly underneath the skylight was becoming intensely dark. 

After only a dozen steps or so he was completely enclosed in sharp foliage, scratching his face and arms as he fought through it. He couldn’t even see the ceiling any more and the floor was covered in a layer of soil. He had assumed that he was on one of the upper storeys of the factory, but as he knelt down at one point to duck underneath a particularly thick patch of foliage, his knee sunk deep into the earth. 

The dog had vanished, but somewhere up ahead he could see a light. He pushed towards it, wincing as the thorns tore new scratches in his skin. A light breeze prickled across him as he drew closer, beckoning with the sweet scent of fresh air. 

Oliver emerged out into an open area and blinked his eyes, stunned. Above him was a clear night sky, the stars pin-sharp in the crisp air. He was in a small clearing in the midst of thick forest, trees extending in every direction. As he turned around, disorientated, he saw a small hut at the edge of the clearing. The walls were stone with a wooden roof covered in moss. Sitting outside it in an intricately carved wooden chair was the most beautiful man Oliver had ever seen. Dressed strangely, he wore a deep blue silken doublet and hose. He poured wine from an ornate flask into a silver goblet. Standing beside the table was a woman, tall with an ageless face, dressed in robes of sumptuous turquoise and holding a wooden staff carved with images of birds, topped with an emerald. 

The man beckoned Oliver closer, gesturing grandly, his face bright with welcome. “A seeker! It has been many lifetimes since I’ve seen one. Come, seeker! I bid thee welcome at my table. Share my wine and we shall talk of many things, old and new!” He filled another goblet, produced from somewhere Oliver didn’t see, and set it on the table. 

Oliver approached and gingerly sat down in another chair that he had somehow not noticed until now. He spoke slowly, as much to himself as either of the two strangers, as a horrific realisation dawned on him. 

“Am I… am I in a coma?”

“Nonsense, friend,” the man said, “quite the opposite, in fact!”

Oliver looked at the wine in the goblet. It was blood-dark, the same colour as the dripping scratches on the hand with which he held it. He didn’t remember picking it up. 

He spoke with the man and the woman for some time but when he rose from the table some time later, he found that he had remembered nothing of the conversation. 

“I have detained you long enough, friend!” said the man, “make haste, the quest awaits!”

Oliver rose unsteadily and looked around. Through a gap in the trees, he caught a glimpse of the distant horizon. He could make out the line of a hill against the moonlit sky and the shape of a tall tower in silhouette. 

It beckoned. 

Oliver started walking. He pushed through undergrowth, though the thick forest and out onto open wilderness, a staggeringly beautiful moonlit land of cedars, hills and waterfalls. The gusts of wind that played with his hair seemed to set his heartstrings thrumming as he walked, fear and wonder coursing through his veins with every beat. He kept his eye fixed upon the tower. 

When he finally stood before it, Oliver couldn’t tell whether the journey to it had taken minutes or days. He had experienced the environment in snatches of lucid thought between periods of dreamlike dissociation. 

The tower stood proudly upon the summit of the hill. It had one large door at its base, which stood ajar. An irresistible invitation. Oliver slipped through it. 

Inside, the tower was hollow, an empty cylinder with only a narrow staircase spiralling around the wall, leading upwards. Quicksilver flowed in rivulets down the walls into a pool in the centre of the floor before him. The walls themselves were covered in writing extending up as far as he could see. He approached the stairs and began to climb. The words were all names, thousands upon thousands of them, each in a different hand, engraved in the stones. 

And then he found an empty space. It was just large enough for his own name. He plucked a thorn from his hand and scratched his name upon the stone. As he wrote, quicksilver welled up beneath the thorn, bleeding down the wall in a thin trickle. When he had finished, his name was carved into the stone just as the others were. 

Oliver awoke as if from sleep. He was standing some way from the factory on a patch of disused land. Patches of brickwork and paving stones hid beneath scrubby weeds, dust and dirt. The sun was fully down now, and the chill of the night had begun to creep into the air. 

There was the crunch of a shoe on small stones behind him. He turned. Maxwell was standing about ten metres away, still holding his camera. His jaw hung open, his eyes wide with awe. After a moment as he seemed to gauge Oliver’s state of mind, he whispered reverentially. 

“I feel very privileged to have witnessed that.”

“Wha- what?” Oliver stammered. 

Maxwell shook himself and stepped closer to Oliver, his tone becoming more urgent. 

“Listen, I know you are very disorientated. Don’t worry, you’re not going crazy. This really isn’t the normal way of things but you’re just going to have to trust me. There’s a whole shit-ton of stuff that you need to know but what’s important right now is that we think someone’s been hunting you, waiting for you to awaken somehow-”

He was interrupted by his phone ringing. 

“Sorry, I’ve got to take this,” he said, smiling apologetically as he held it up to his ear. “Lizzy. Oliver’s awakened. I know- listen, maybe this was their plan, somehow. We’ve got to go to the Consilium with this- holy _ shit _ !”

The ground opened up beneath Oliver’s feet and he fell through into darkness. 

*****

Sam looked over his shoulder at the lecture theatre from his front row seat. The seminar was reasonably well-attended. Sam licked his dry lips and tried to stop himself tapping his foot as his supervisor introduced his talk. He’d presented papers before, but every time he still felt as vulnerable as he did when he first faced rows and rows of people more learned than he. He stood up and walked to the lectern, accepting the laser pointer from Iris. She gave him a wink as she bustled back to her seat. 

Sam turned to the audience and waited for the chatter to subside before beginning. He hadn’t managed to do too much rehearsal of his talk, but he was reasonably confident with the material. 

The moment waiting for the noise to die down started to drag into several moments. The voices were starting to become louder rather than quieter. He cleared his throat politely, then flinched as he heard a loud, unintelligible shout. His cheek twitched in irritation. 

“Excuse me-” He began to speak, but the room erupted in a cacophony of angry jeers. People rose to their feet to scream vitriol at him. All apart from one. 

He felt an adrenaline kick to the gut almost before he fully comprehended what he saw. His estranged father, sitting calmly in the middle of a row, staring directly into his eyes, an inscrutable smile on his lips. 

With a nauseating lurch, Sam felt the room spin around him. He staggered backwards, hand reaching toward the whiteboard for support but he missed it, grasping at thin air. The room turned faster and faster, whirling around him at dizzying speed. He clenched his eyes tightly shut and clamped his hands over his ears. 

With wrenching anguish, he felt his own mind peeling itself apart, thought by thought. Disbelief spread through his memories like cracks through glass. Each of his impulses, each mental voice, each thought and every one of his cares flew off beyond his reach until he was left standing alone in the dark with nothing but his bare consciousness illuminating itself, staring back into himself eternally. 

The cascade of unravelling logic had revealed at its base a falsified assumption. A deception of breathtaking, incomprehensible scale. 

His thoughts and sensations returned like bolts hurled from the sky. A memory bloomed into life with such vivid reality he couldn’t tell whether he was living it or remembering it. 

He was lying prone on black rocks, sharp as razors. Choking palls of sulphur gouted from fissures in the ground. He was in a large cavern lit in hellish red by rivers of magma flowing through it. He struggled to his feet, wincing in pain. 

Standing in front of him was a figure dressed in sumptuous black silk, with a black staff with a snake carved as if coiled around the shaft. She regarded him with dark eyes through a curtain of long dark hair. He opened his mouth to speak. 

The next thing he remembered was seeing a tower in the distance. They had spoken for a long time, he thought, but he couldn’t remember what had been said. The woman was now pointing to the tower. Tall and thin, it was still dwarfed by the vast cavern. 

It beckoned. 

He walked towards it, skirting pools of sizzling liquid and bubbling mud that seared his skin even at a distance. As he went, he heard what might have been human screams, but so far off or distorted that it was hard to be certain. 

As he approached the tower he heard chilling, inhuman laughter behind him. Over his shoulder he saw creatures with skin as red and slick as spilt blood bounding after him, scrabbling over the ground with powerful arms ending in claws, hideously baying and cackling with their slavering jaws. Sam burst into a frantic sprint, leaping over the bubbling pools and rivers of fire in an attempt to escape them. 

He burst through the open door of the tower at a dead run, moments ahead of his pursuers. The tower was constructed of enormous, roughly-hewn blocks of black basalt. Inside, it was hollow, with a narrow staircase spiralling around the wall. Upwards was the only way to go. 

As he ran, his fingers brushed across names engraved in the rock. There were thousands upon thousands of them all the way up the tower. A blank space caught his eye, calling irresistibly to be filled. As the devils careened through the door below, he picked up a shard of metal from the floor and scratched his name upon the stone, writing frantically as they scaled the stairs behind him and sank their claws into his back. A jaw closed upon his neck. 

Sam jerked awake with a gasp. He was lying on his back, restraints strapped around his wrists and ankles. He stared uncomprehendingly at the small, strange room and its harsh ceiling light for a moment before noticing someone leaning over him. 

“Sam, can you hear me?” The stranger’s voice was calm. 

Sam nodded slowly. 

“You’re in an ambulance. You’ve had a seizure and we’re taking you to hospital. My name’s John, I’m a paramedic. You don’t need to worry, you’re in good hands.” He smiled apologetically. “Sorry I’ve had to strap you down, but you were in danger of hurting yourself. We’ll get you out soon, I promise.”

Sam concentrated, trying to take in his surroundings. He had been laid on a gurney. There was a blood oxygen monitor on one of his fingers. There was a bandage around his head and he felt a dull ache just above his right ear. There was an infernal beeping from some electronic device somewhere that set his nerves jangling with every pulse. 

John was sitting on a chair to his right. He was an older man with greying hair and a chubby face, regarding Sam with genuine sympathy. “We’ll be there in about a minute-”

A loud exclamation from the driver cut him off. “Holy fuck! Brace!”

A lorry’s airhorn blared, then a colossal impact threw the ambulance onto its side, flipping Sam’s gurney over, trapping him underneath it against the wall. As it flew it hit John in the face and he fell heavily backwards against the wall. Electronics, gas canisters and packets of supplies crashed down on top of him as he tried to shield himself with his arms. 

The deafening noise of the crash subsided in an instant, the eerie quiet disturbed only by a gentle hissing from somewhere underneath the vehicle. Sam could just about see John’s head through the gap between the wall and the gurney. John grunted in pain, forcing himself up, clutching at a head wound, blood dripping through his hands. 

“Andy!” he shouted, “Andy, you alright? Andy?!”

There was no reply from the driver. Sam heard John picking up and throwing equipment toward the front of the ambulance. 

“Don’t worry, Sam, I’ll have you upright in no time.” His speech sounded slurred, woozy. “Just got to clear this...” 

Sam could see blood dripping onto the detritus at John’s feet. 

The back door of the ambulance closest to the ground opened, falling onto the tarmac with a loud clang. Through the new aperture, Sam could see the tail of a long coat and black boots covered in white bird droppings. His blood froze. The other door of the ambulance creaked open and the old man stepped inside. 

“Hey mate,” John said groggily, “give me a hand with-”

There was a gunshot. John’s body fell to the floor with a dull thud and a crunch of broken glass. Sam screamed. 

The old man began to chant something under his ragged breath, the words arcane and unintelligible, but possessed of a strange rhythm. A hole opened up beneath the gurney and Sam fell into darkness. 

*****

Constance stepped out of the morgue’s shower into the cold air of what she thought of as the Recovery Room. Officially it was just the ladies’ shower room, but Constance had filled it with soft toys, scented candles and cute pictures of cats in order to create a space for mental as well as physical cleansing after the gruesome business of autopsy. She pulled her towel from the rail and began to dry herself. This particular  _ colleague  _ had taken far longer than she had anticipated before she let her assistant go home early. She still had the paperwork to do and it was already late. 

After drying her hair and dressing in something that even she recognised was a little too optimistically summery, Constance blew out the candles and watched the glowing wicks fade from amber to black. 

_ Is this really what I want to do with my life? _

Although she asked herself this question regularly, part of her was always surprised when the answer was ‘yes’. Perhaps it had started with her sister, but the job had sunk its talons into her for other reason. She didn’t really know why. She wasn’t even sure that she wanted to, but now a thought crystallised into articulation; that her favourite colleagues were the corpses. 

Perhaps the teddy bears and scented candles were a reaction against it, part of some kind of psychological façade that her subconscious had erected to conceal her morbid fascination with the dead. 

Because there  _ was _ fascination there, wasn’t there? 

She took one more breath of the sweetly-scented air and opened the door back into the harsh light of the morgue’s main corridor. 

Before she had taken two steps out of the door, all of the lights shut off, plunging the corridor into total darkness. She waited for a moment for the power to come back on. 

Nothing. Not even backup power. Constance cursed and pulled her phone out of the pocket of her cardigan. She pressed the power button, but it didn’t respond. She must have forgotten to charge it. She cursed again. 

This level was underground. She’d have to get to the stairs, or at least find someone else. She turned around and stepped back through the door again, groping around in the dark. She found the box of matches on the shelf where she’d left them and carefully felt for one of the scented candles. She took out a match, struck it and held it to the candle wick, creating a small island of light. The candle was in a glass jar that was still hot to the touch, so she took off her cardigan and wrapped it around her hand before picking up the candle. She stuffed her phone into one cup of her bra and the box of matches into her cleavage. She sighed. 

_ I bet I look ridiculous.  _

She opened the heavy door and held it open as she stepped carefully over the threshold. Spilling hot candle wax onto her hand, not to mention her new cardigan, would make today even more of a write-off. 

Constance couldn’t see a thing holding the candle in front of her, so she held it up and slightly behind her so that it cast light forward without blinding her. After a few moments, her eyes began to adjust. 

She held her other hand out in front of her as she shuffled forward, heading down the corridor towards the stairs up to the ground floor. 

Her hand met the cold surface of a closed door. This door wasn’t normally closed. In fact, she’d only ever seen this door close during a fire drill. The power cut must have taken out the electromagnets that held the doors open. She groped around for the handle and pulled it. The door didn’t move. She tried again, harder this time, but it seemed stuck fast. Constance put the candle down on the ground and gripped the door handle with both hands, throwing her full body weight backwards. The door opened slowly, its bottom edge dragging across the floor with an ear-splitting grinding noise like stone on stone. 

Constance picked up her candle and continued slowly through the door. The building was extremely quiet. Even though it was after hours, she should have been able to hear some level of noise from the floor above. Or for that matter, from someone in this basement. She certainly shouldn’t have been the only person still here. But all she could hear was her own breathing. 

She was in the corridor outside the main morgue, now. The door to it was just ahead of her, on the right, but she needed to keep on straight ahead through the double doors at the end of the main corridor. 

As she passed the morgue door, she felt a cold breeze coming from her right. The candle started to flicker as the air caught it and Constance quickly shielded it with her hand to stop it from being blown out. 

_ The door must be open, but where is this air coming from?  _

There was an air purification system in the morgue, but it didn’t generate a very noticeable airflow. Certainly not as powerful as this. She moved closer, through the door. The air grew instantly colder. This room was kept just above freezing to slow the decay of the bodies kept here. Constance shivered, regretting her choice of clothing. 

At first, the candle had only given enough light for her to see perhaps a metre in front of her, but now that her eyes were growing more adapted to the dark she could start to make out the doors of the refrigerators on either side of the room. Then she saw a shape ahead of her, someone standing a few metres away in the darkness. 

“Terry?” she said, tremulously. “Terry, is that you?” 

The figure didn’t move. But it must have been him. Terry was the only morgue technician working tonight. 

“Oh, stop playing silly buggers, Terry. This could be serious. Where’s this wind coming from?”

The figure started to turn around just as a gust of freezing air extinguished the candle. 

“Oh, fuck. Hang on, let me re-light this…” She knelt down and placed the candle on the floor. 

A noise made her stop and listen. The sound of a bare footstep on the hard floor. And another. She stood up and pulled out the box of matches, withdrawing one with shaking fingers. Another footstep. She started to back away as she struck the match. 

The match flared on the first strike, a tiny sunburst in her hands. She strained her eyes to see beyond it. 

Another footstep. Into the match’s sphere of light lurched a naked man, skin ashen grey and smelling of death, the only light in his glassy eyes a tiny pinpoint where the match reflected. On his pale abdomen was the line of stitches that Constance had made only half an hour ago when she removed his liver for analysis. 

Constance screamed, terror consuming her as she stumbled backwards, dropping the match and the matchbox both. It went out immediately and absolute darkness flooded her vision once again. She turned towards where she thought the door was and rushed forwards headlong with her hands out in front of her. 

She kept going until she hit the opposite wall of the corridor, almost falling backwards from the impact. She turned right and ran for the double doors to the stairs. She thumped against the doors heavily and winced in pain. Just like the others, they didn’t move an inch. 

She was still screaming. She had to stop. She couldn’t hear the footsteps if she was screaming. She clamped her mouth tightly shut, whimpering instead. She felt for the door handles in panic before remembering these doors opened outwards. She set her shoulder to one of them and pushed as hard as she could. The door started to move, the horrific grinding noise like nails on a blackboard. 

Then she was through, climbing the stairs on all fours to avoid tripping in the blackness. 

Light. The doors were open at the top of the stairs and light streamed through, stinging her eyes but also bringing tears of relief. But there was something odd about the light. It wasn’t the glow of a sunset or pallid, clinical strip light, but the flickering amber of firelight. 

Constance ran through the door and then stopped dead. This wasn’t right. She should have come up into the main corridor of the building. Instead, she stood at the edge of a large atrium covered by a vaulted stone roof, illuminated by flaming torches in sconces on the walls. At the other end was a mound of naked corpses piled more than three metres high. Down the front side of it, the bodies were laid out so as to construct steps of human backs leading to the top, where sat a high-backed throne made of the contorted bodies of the dead. Upon the throne, slouching to one side, leaning her chin on her hand and looking at her with a glassy stare, sat Verity. Her sister. Her flesh was the pure white of death, her eyes and hair, the colour of dried blood, but it was her. She stood up from her throne and spoke, her tone cold as granite. 

“This place is my domain, sister. I’ve been watching you.”

Constance turned and fled, not back down the stairs, but out of another door behind her, out into the night. 

Leaden grey clouds churned silently above her. There was no moon, or stars, or any other light sources, but somehow she could see. She ran out into an unfamiliar landscape. It wasn’t the hospital campus, or even Exeter, but a flat expanse of rock and dust from which stone ruins rose like rows of jagged teeth. 

She ran until her lungs were bursting then fell to her knees, gasping for breath. Her limbs felt heavy and slow. Just moving in this place was difficult, as if the ground itself wanted to drag her down into it. The silence was maddening, she could almost feel it physically pressing in on her eardrums. Except, no, there was something. Another sound apart from her own sobbing. The far-off rush of water. She followed it. 

A river. Its turbid waters looked forbiddingly, grimly cold. Standing on its bank, she saw a figure in a small raft floating down towards her. It was a woman, swathed in grey hessian robes with long black hair that hangs to her waist. With her long staff of yew, she steadied the raft at the water’s edge and held out a hand to Constance. 

Constance took it and stepped onto the raft. She spoke with the woman for some time, but as she stepped off the raft some time later, her memory of the conversation vanished like smoke. 

Before her stood a tower, a single spike of rock with veins of gold, silver and sparkling gems in its rough surface. 

It beckoned. 

The door at its base was open. Constance walked through it, battling against weariness with every step. Inside, the tower was hollow and bare except for a staircase that spiralled up around the inside of the wall. Constance climbed, leaning on the wall for support. Under her fingers were names carved into the rock, thousands upon thousands of them. She staggered onwards, upwards, her limbs feeling like lead, until her hand touched a section of bare stone. Writing her name was irresistible. 

A rough diamond lay on the step by her foot. She picked it up and scratched her name into the rock. When she had finished, it was engraved as deeply as the others. 

She woke. The bleak landscape was gone. Instead she was standing on a patch of overgrown, disused land at the back of the old pathology lab. It was night. The sounds of cars rushing past came from just beyond a nearby hedge. Sodium street lamps flooded the darkness with their wan light. 

Someone began muttering something unintelligible behind her. She spun around to see the old man with the stained coat and hat advancing towards her, gesturing strangely with his hands. She took a step backwards and fell into the ground. 


	11. Awakenings, Pt III

Oliver hit the floor and rolled, miraculously missing several large rocks that would have been extremely painful had he fallen on them. He sprang to his feet in time to see the hole through which he’d come vanish into thin air, leaving instead a ceiling of vaulted Victorian bricks. 

He was in the chambers behind the railway tunnel, but this time they were different. The room he was in had a doorway at the back, but in front of him were metal bars that split the room in two. There was a metal door in the bars, like a prison cell door, with a large padlock on it. There was another doorway on the far side of the room, through which a flickering orange glow shone that reflected off the damp walls and floor. Although he couldn’t see the light source, he could smell faint smoke and candlewax. 

Something moved in a shadowy corner and Oliver gave a start. A black robed figure moved away from the wall where it had been standing motionless, watching him from the darkness. 

“Hey!” Oliver shouted, “who the fuck are you?”

The figure slowly reached up to its hood and pulled it back. Underneath the hood its skin had been tightly wrapped with bandages that were stained with patches of some dark liquid that was oozing out from beneath them. The figure carefully arranged the bandages around its mouth with a gloved hand, creating an opening through which Oliver could see the occasional flash of black teeth. It spoke in a harsh voice that dripped with venom. 

“You must be feeling disorientated, young man.”

Something about the voice wasn’t right. It sent chills down Oliver’s spine. He tried to act nonchalant to cover his nerves. 

“You could say that.”

“All will be revealed soon. We await your friends, then the ritual can-” The figure broke off into a series of gut-wrenching coughs. 

“That sounds serious, man.” Oliver folded his arms. “You should get that looked at. Maybe live somewhere that’s not a dungeon.” 

“Silence!” The figure spat the word with sudden vehemence and Oliver flinched. The figure continued, its voice sounding less and less human with every word. “You are now under my instruction and I will not tolerate-” 

It stopped speaking, cocking its head, then started to chant something unintelligible under its breath. 

A mental image formed in Oliver’s mind of Sam falling out of a hole in the ceiling, just as he had, with the urgency of a vivid premonition. Oliver took a couple of steps backwards. 

_ I know this, but how? _

Oliver steadied himself, ready for anything. 

The figure finished chanting and made a strange gesture. A hole six feet long appeared in the air just below the ceiling. Sam half-fell out of it, but hung there suspended by his arms and legs. He was strapped to a hospital gurney that was too big for the hole. Then the hole disappeared, severing the straps. Oliver caught Sam just before he hit the brick floor head-first. 

Sam scrambled away in panic, looking around with wild eyes. “What the-? Oliver, is that you?” he gasped. 

Oliver nodded. “Yeah, it’s me. And our new friend Mumm-Ra the Ever Living.”

The figure started to snarl a response when another vertical portal opened beside him on the other side of the bars, spilling bright white light into the dark chamber. The old man stepped out of it, his pungent smell spreading through the air. The portal closed behind him instantly. He shoved the handgun he had been carrying into a large coat pocket and pulled on the shoulder of the black-robed figure, ignoring Oliver and Sam. 

“Summat went wrong. Them locals, they ‘spect summat.”

The black-robed figure turned its head towards the old man and sucked in a hissing breath through clenched teeth. “What? How?”

“They were watchin’ Oliver. They know!”

The black-robed figure growled gutterally and shook with restrained rage. “Fetch the others quickly. Constance is ready. The others may not be but we cannot afford to wait. Go, now!” Then it spun on its heel and walked through the doorway back into the lighted room, cursing violently. 

The old man nodded then looked upwards. He located a drip of slime hanging from the ceiling like a stalactite, reached up, pulled it from the ceiling and guided it into his mouth. Oliver covered his mouth with his hand to stop himself from retching. 

The old man chanted in his insane speech for a moment and then a portal opened in front of him, not to the brightly-lit place but somewhere almost as dark as the underground chamber. The sound of rushing cars and the smell of exhaust fumes briefly drifted from it, then the old man stepped through and it disappeared. 

Oliver stared in astonishment at what he had just seen. He glanced at Sam, expecting to see the emotion mirrored in his face, but instead Sam was gazing in fascination at the space where the old man had disappeared, nodding his head slightly. 

“You okay, Sam?” Oliver said. 

Sam got to his feet unsteadily and brushed dirt off himself. 

“I don’t know. I’d say there’s a more than even chance that I’m having an elaborate psychological breakdown at the moment.”

“That goes for both of us.”

Sam nodded and licked his lips nervously. “Well, if it’s not a hallucination, then I’d say we’ve been kidnapped by evil wizards, which is not going to be easy to explain to my PhD supervisor.”

“We’re back in the chambers behind the railway tunnel. I don’t remember these metal bars, though.”

“No. I don’t think that any of our memories of this place can be relied upon.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Oliver lowered his voice. “I haven’t had a chance to look through here yet, Mumm-Ra’s been watching me since I got here.” He crept towards the doorway at the back of the room. 

He could just about make out another chamber in the dim light, with several other exits leading off from it. 

He whispered back to Sam. “This place must be bigger than we thought.”

Sam moved past him into the next room, then paused, squinting into the darkness pensively. “I think I know which way to go...” 

“Really? Surely we won’t just be able to walk out a back door - these guys may be insane but they’re not stupid.”

Sam didn’t appear to hear him as he stole further into the room, heading for one of the other doorways. Oliver was about to follow him when he had another strange premonition. 

_ Constance. And the old man.  _

“They're coming back!” he hissed. 

Oliver left the doorway and dashed back to the middle of the room where he and Sam had fallen in, holding his arms up. He only just made it as a portal opened in the ceiling and Constance fell through, feet first. Oliver caught her awkwardly and she fell on top of him. 

She looked down at him, dumbfounded for a moment. “...Oliver? What are you doing underneath the hospital?” She looked up just in time to see the portal close. “What is happening?!”

“Constance, it’s okay- actually no, it’s not okay-”

“What just happened to me?”

“Sorry, but,” Oliver groaned, “would you mind moving?”

Constance sprang up. “Sorry! Sorry, are you alright?”

He accepted her offered hand and got to his feet. 

“Oh my God, Oliver, I have to tell you about what I just-” Constance broke off mid-sentence to gasp as a portal opened in the room beyond, just visible through the doorway. As the old man emerged through it, the harsh voice of the black-robed figure echoed from somewhere further in. Oliver strained to hear his words. 

“Isabel is awakening. The local mages have not yet located her. Go now and seize her!”

“What about the last?”

“None of the rest have awakened yet. They have been contacted by the locals and are proceeding to a public place. You must intercept them!”

The old man disappeared through another portal and silence returned to the chamber. 

Oliver whispered into Constance’s ear. “Sam thinks he’s found a way out.”

A chilling laugh came from the other room, as if in response. 

Constance scowled back over her shoulder at the sound as they walked carefully into the next room. She pulled out her phone for light, then looked back down at it in surprise. “Wha… why is this working now? Ugh, never mind."

There was no sign of Sam. He must have continued further on. Constance made her way over to the doorway on the left and looked inside. 

“Sam!” Constance called quietly into the darkness. There was no reply. 

As Oliver was approaching the doorway on the right, Constance gasped. 

Oliver turned around to see that the doorway through which they had come had disappeared, the wall blank. Oliver rushed back to where the door had been, feeling along the wall for some kind of join. There was nothing. He thumped his fist against it in frustration. There was only the dull thud of flesh on solid brick. 

“Damn it!” Oliver cursed, “I should have stayed until they got Isabel! Fuck!”

Sam’s voice echoed from somewhere distant. “Hey!”

A few moments later, he appeared in the right-hand doorway, a puzzled look on his face. 

“You just entered this room from the first one?” he asked.

“Yes,” Constance said, “did you find the way out yet?”

Sam shook his head. “We appear to be inside a spatial manifold - these doors do not appear to lead where they should. I stayed in the same room that I entered after I realised that the door had disappeared after I’d entered it.”

“You’re going to have to tell us what a spatial manifold is, Sam.”

“Well, I think it’d be easier to demonstrate, actually.”

He walked out of the room and into another. Oliver heard his footsteps receding in one direction, and then start to get louder, coming from behind them. Sam reappeared from a doorway on the opposite side of the room. 

Constance started to breathe faster, clearly unnerved. “You mean we can’t get out, no matter which way we go?”

Sam’s brow knotted in thought. “I… I don’t know. I need to think.” He looked around at the room as if seeing something that Oliver couldn’t. 

Oliver paused for a moment before speaking. “Are you getting... premonitions? Feelings about stuff that’s about to happen?”

Constance and Sam both shook their heads. 

“But,” Sam said, “if you mean that you somehow know things and you don’t know how you know them…”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Something happened to me,” Constance said, “I don’t know what it was, but something definitely happened. I went somewhere. Or I had a vision, I suppose. But, I feel different now.”

Sam nodded. “I would have normally said that a strong hallucination can have powerful aftereffects, making the sufferer feel different or changed. Normally. We haven’t had a chance to talk about it but it seems that all of us may have had similar experiences. I too feel different in a way that I can’t describe.”

Isabel’s voice called fearfully from the next room. “Hello?”

Oliver dashed across to the doorway. She was standing next to one of the walls, looking back at its solid surface in dismay. As soon as she saw Oliver she ran over to him, clasping her arms around him and resting her head on his shoulder. Then she stepped back, face flushing. 

“S-something just happened to me-” she began, stuttering in shock. 

“You went to another place?” Oliver clasped her shoulders. 

Her eyes lit up. “Yes!” 

“And it was beautiful?”

“Er, sort of, I guess?” Isabel raised an eyebrow. 

“You didn’t think so?”

“Er,” Constance said from behind him, “‘beautiful’ certainly isn’t the word I’d have used.”

“Really?”

Constance regarded him strangely. “I don’t think that we experienced the same thing.” She turned back to Sam. “What about you, Sam?”

Sam had his eyes closed, concentrating deeply. 

“No,” he said, absently, “I’d say not.”

He opened his eyes and smiled. 

“I know the way out.”

*****

Irving reached the gates into Northernhay gardens at a run, slowing down to catch his breath as he passed through. The evening was turning to night as the glow of the sky faded and as he walked up the gently sloping path into the gardens, the rush of traffic fell away behind him. 

The phone call had come out of the blue. Someone calling himself Maxwell had told him to get to a public place as quickly as possible. Irving was about to call him an arsehole and hang up the call but then the guy had said something about Oliver being kidnapped. He’d been very insistent, and very well informed about Irving and the others. Maxwell had said that he was trying to reach Peter and get him to rendezvous in front of Exeter Central station with some ‘associates’ of his. Irving hadn’t really liked the sound of that. 

Instead, he and Peter had hurriedly agreed to meet in Northernhay gardens instead to talk about what to do. He hadn’t been able to contact any of the others. 

He nervously cradled the improvised explosive in the pocket of his jacket. He had used a small plastic bottle as a container with a strip of magnesium sticking out that would serve as the wick. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d made something so dangerous. He certainly shouldn’t be carrying it around. He told himself that he would dispose of it safely as soon as he got home. 

The park’s open grass lawns edged with floral beds were normally welcoming in daylight, but in darkness, the quiet, still space felt isolated. The lights of the street behind him seemed more distant than he liked. Irving frowned. 

_ Ach, this isn’t a good meeting place.  _

As he approached the statue, he could see Peter’s portly figure leaning against it in the gloom. He called out to him, voice pitched low so as not to carry too far. 

“Peter!”

Peter flinched and turned to look. “Oh, Irving, thank God. What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it. Have you managed to reach any of the others?”

“No,” Peter said, looking around nervously. “I tried Lucy and got through, I thought, but then there was no reply from the other end.” 

The trees rustled in a sudden night breeze, causing a prickle of fear to run across Irving’s scalp. 

“What do you think, Peter?” Irving asked, “is this another trick? Is this Maxwell guy working with the old man, or-”

“Maxwell?” Peter said, “who’s that? I was contacted by someone calling themselves ‘Lysistrata’.”

Irving was about to reply when the old man stepped out from behind the statue, next to Peter, his black eyes fixed on them with frantic energy. He was holding a handgun in one wrinkled hand, down at his side where it brushed against his stained coat. 

Peter gasped in shock, looking first at the old man and then past him at something that Irving couldn’t see behind the statue’s plinth. 

“Both of ye,” the old man snarled, “through thurr,  _ now _ .” He gestured with the pistol. Irving leaned around the statue. 

Standing in mid air was an oval of flickering light. As he moved his head further, Irving realised that he was looking through a window into another space, a dark chamber lit by orange candlelight. 

Peter shook his head wordlessly, too shocked to speak. 

The old man’s expression turned hysterical. He screamed into Peter’s face.“Ye go!” Then he raised the pistol. 

Irving stealthily drew the flashbang out of his pocket and hid it behind his back. His lighter was already in his other hand. 

The old man menaced Peter with the pistol, pressing the barrel against his cheek. “Dun’ make me use thur  _ magic _ on you. Get in thur portal!”

With both hands behind his back, Irving flicked the lighter, aiming for the short magnesium taper, listening for the subtle hiss of ignition. 

_ I get this wrong, I set myself on fire.  _

It caught. Bright white light from the burning magnesium shone from behind him, as if he’d turned on a torch. The old man turned the handgun on Irving. 

“Wossat? Wot ye got-?”

In the elongated moment where Irving’s arm drew back to hurl the flashbang, he watched in helpless horror as the old man’s finger squeezed the trigger of the pistol. 

The barrel blazed brilliant white light, extending to fill Irving’s entire vision. A roar of air drowned out all sound and his body was suddenly gripped by a massive acceleration. The blinding light resolved into turbulent white cloud, rushing past him at incredible speed. 

He was flying. 

He soared high in the air between colossal banks of cloud. There was no visible ground, only cloud and occasional glimpses of infinite hazy blueness between them. The air was alive with the smell of ozone and his skin prickled with airborne charge. Where wind shears drove banks of cloud against one another sheets of electricity arced between them and explosions of bright flame sent shockwaves rippling through them. 

Power and might surged through him. On his back were enormous wings of fire, catching the wind and holding him aloft. 

As he looked at them in awe, a violent gust blew him off balance and for a terrifying moment he tumbled towards a whirling cloud crackling with energy before he righted himself. 

He caught sight of a dark pinpoint in the distance. Another solid object. He flew towards it, his wings obeying his every thought. It was a beast, itself flying on tawny wings, with the head and forelegs of a bird and the hind legs of a horse, pulling a shining chariot through the sky. 

The beast banked in a wide arc to match his speed and direction, coming alongside him as he raced through the sky. The chariot’s rider wore a billowing cloak of white and a crown of golden oak leaves, with a halo of angelic light illuminating her ageless face. 

They conversed over the din of thunder and howling wind, but as Irving broke off to follow her outstretched arm, the conversation vanished from his mind. 

She had pointed to a tower. A shining pinnacle of gold rising from a cloud top as though perched on a mountain peak. 

It beckoned. 

Suddenly Irving was flanked by beings of light at each wing. They wore armour of gold and flew on wings of fire like his own, carrying flaming swords and bolts of lightning, nocked in oaken bows. The company dived into a steep descent, down toward the tower. Other beings were there at its base. A melee. There was a battle being fought. Irving didn’t know the sides, but he was certain of one thing. He had to enter the tower. 

The beings at his side crashed through the enemy battle line in an unstoppable charge and set about themselves with their swords, clearing a path for Irving to reach the tower doors. They stood ajar, the sounds of more combat echoing from within. 

Irving’s wings folded into nothing as he entered the doorway. The tower was a hollow cylinder of white stone with a single stair that climbed to the top, spiralling around the wall, upon which a desperate battle was being fought. The swords and shields of fallen soldiers lay scattered on the floor. Irving started to climb, carried along as his allies rushed up to join the fight. 

The walls themselves were covered in engraved names. Irving saw a small space high on the opposite wall. It called to him, but the way was blocked by a melee. 

An enemy fighter flew down from above and landed next to him, thrusting at him with a flaming sword. Irving ducked and the being at his side caught the blow on its shield. After dispatching the attacker with a sweep of its sword it yelled at Irving over the din of battle in words he understood but did not recognise. 

“Seeker, where do you seek?” 

Irving pointed. The being gripped the back of Irving’s shirt and hurled him across the empty centre of the tower onto the stairs on the opposite side. It followed with powerful beats of its wings and landed above him on the stair, using its shield to deflect arrows of lightning raining down from archers higher up. 

A sword of golden flame lay on the ground at Irving’s feet. He picked it up and burned his name into the stone. 

Irving blinked. He was back in the dark gardens, staring down the barrel of the old man’s pistol. Barely a heartbeat had passed. The pistol had fired directly at his face, but he felt no pain. Somehow, it had missed him. 

The old man’s mouth twisted into a fiendish grin. 

The sound of a motorbike’s roaring engine began to intrude into Irving’s hearing. There was a screech of tyres from the gateway to the park and Irving glanced backwards to see a bike racing up the park towards them. A bolt of lightning arced from the rider’s outstretched hand to the old man, intercepted at the last moment by an invisible field of energy that redirected the lightning into the ground. The old man screamed with rage, making a gesture with his off-hand. The fuel tank of the bike exploded in a fierce fireball, covering the rider’s legs in burning fuel. 

Irving turned to run into the trees, but the ground beneath his feet disappeared and he fell into darkness. 

*****

Sam followed his intuition through the maze. Except, it wasn’t intuition. It was as if he could see, with some other form of sight. The twists and turns of this tortured space folded back upon themselves like origami. 

He glanced back at his companions holding their phones out in front of them like lanterns. They had been trudging through the moist, fausty darkness for more than ten minutes, long enough to have walked the entire length of the railway tunnel several times. Oliver caught his eye and gave him a pained expression. 

“This is making my head hurt, Sam.”

Sam grunted. “We’re almost there.”  _ As long as I’m not insane and this is some form of psychosis. If I am and it is, then... well, I’m going write one hell of a paper.  _

“You can tell how far? All of this looks the same to me.”

“We just have to turn left another four times. Don’t think about it too much.”

As Sam stepped into the last room, he cursed in frustration. The room was a dead end, every wall bare save for the door they walked in through. 

“Oh, no, no… This can’t be right. There should be a doorway, or something.”

Oliver walked forward, further into the room. “This must be it, Sam. None of the other rooms were like this. There’s got to be a way.”

Constance nodded. “Which wall did you think held the door, Sam?”

Sam pointed. “This one, the far wall.”

Constance approached it with a hand outstretched and touched her palm to the stone. The wall turned to sand and fell into a pile that rushed out across the floor with a loud hiss, revealing another dark room beyond. 

Sam was stunned to silence. 

Constance withdrew her hand and looked at it. “I… don’t quite know how I did that.”

“Holy shit, Constance,” Oliver began, before Isabel cut him off. 

“Shhh! Look!” she whispered, and pointed into the next room. A faint flicker of orange light spilled from the doorway in the opposite wall. She crept forward across the pile of sand, eyes wide. 

Sam followed Isabel’s cautious steps into the room beyond, shoes sinking slightly into the sand. He was about to speak when Isabel put her hand across his lips and pointed. “That’s the door back to the room with the bars,” she breathed, “it must be.”

Oliver stalked over to the doorway. He carefully looked into the next room for an instant then jerked his head back. He nodded excitedly. 

As Sam started to move toward the door, Oliver held his hands up. 

“Wait! I think…” he whispered before pausing, eyes flashing in urgent thought. “Okay, everyone needs to do what I say when I give the signal.”

*****

Irving landed on a masonry floor, falling heavily on his side. The impact knocked the air from his lungs. Fighting to take a shuddering breath, he looked around. Standing on the other side of a grid of iron bars was a black-robed figure whose hands worked through a series of arcane gestures. The portal in the ceiling above Irving closed, leaving only dark, dripping bricks. There was another portal just to the figure’s right. Through it Irving could see the park. Peter was scrambling away across the ground, desperately trying to flee the magical duel between the biker and the old man. Irving looked around frantically. There was no way through the iron bars except a metal doorway, locked with a padlock. He was trapped. 

There was a cry from behind him. He looked back to see Isabel sprint past and launch herself feet first at the door in the metal bars. The hinges snapped and Isabel’s momentum sent the door flying through the air to clang deafeningly off the opposite wall. Isabel landed adroitly on her feet and pivoted towards the figure, muscles tensing to charge him. 

The black-robed figure gave an inhuman howl of frustration and gestured savagely at Isabel, who stumbled, clutching at her head. 

The others ran out from around the corner in Isabel’s wake. Constance hauled Irving to his feet as Oliver raced past them, screaming at the black-robed figure. “Hey Mumm-Ra! Look at this!”

The figure glanced towards him as he threw a large shard of broken glass at its face. The shard arced through the air on a perfect trajectory directly toward the figure’s left eye before, at the last moment, impossibly changing direction just before striking as if deflected by an invisible shield. 

Running up right behind Oliver came Sam, heading straight for the portal. He leapt through, landing on the flagstones beneath the statue just before the old man staggered backwards through the portal. He was clutching at a bleeding wound in his chest, his hands, lips and beard covered in blood. Irving saw him concentrate on the portal and realised with horror that the old man was about to close off their escape. 

Irving reached out with his mind, throwing his whole will into disrupting the old man. Suddenly, he felt it. He could see the old man’s magic forming in front of him. Irving tore it apart. The old man looked at him in shock as his spell dissolved. The portal still hung in the air. 

Constance ran for it, ducking through the broken metal doorway. The old man lunged, trying to grab her arm as she passed him, but Isabel, still lying on the floor, took his leg out from under him with a ferocious kick. 

The old man grunted in pain as he struck the floor, then, as his gaze followed Constance through the portal, he wailed, his voice frantic. “They’re comin’!”

The robed figure let out an apoplectic shriek and then began to chant, its words not mystical this time, but guttural and profane. 

Oliver grabbed Isabel and hauled her through the portal as the figure chanted. With each horrific syllable, both the robed figure and the old man darkened, as if the light affected them less and less. Around them clouds of darkness grew, more profoundly black than any shadow Irving had ever seen. Irving sprinted for the portal, harried by the spreading shadow, horror rising in his throat. 

The old man’s hand reached out of the cloud to grab his ankle. Irving saw it late. Just as the hand was about to drag him into some horrid abyss, there was a flash of light. The girl with the black hair appeared from thin air between him and the old man. As his hand touched her, she was pulled into the dark cloud in his stead. 

Irving stumbled through the portal, back into the crisp night air. It snapped shut behind him, leaving only empty space. 

He collapsed onto the ground, panting. 

A very tall man dressed in bike leathers offered him a hand. Irving took it and was hauled quickly upright by the man’s firm grip. He flashed Irving a confident smile. 

“Nicely done,” he said, clapping Irving on the back. “Bloody love a good escape.”

“Who…” Irving stopped to catch his breath. “Who the hell are you?”

“Contra. No, don’t tell me your names. Too many people know them already.” He looked over his shoulder at a young man in a suit jacket and jeans running up the hill towards them. “Maxwell, isn’t it? The Hierarch’s on his way.” 

Maxwell reached them, panting almost as hard as Irving. “We need to get them somewhere safer.”

“Like I said,  _ Libertine _ , the Hierarch’s on his way. In fact, here he is.”

A tall, slim man with dark skin, dressed in a grey suit, walked calmly towards them up the path from Rougemont Gardens. He looked around casually as he approached them, before regarding each one of them in turn. 

“On behalf of the Exeter Consilium, I welcome you. My name is Aequitas. I apologise for another unwelcome imposition on your day, but you must now come with us.”

Irving frowned. “‘Must?’”

The man nodded gravely. “Yes.”

Maxwell looked around at each of them. “Wait, where’s Lucy?” 

The Hierarch shook his head regretfully. “Alas, she awakened in an area outside the control of the Consilium.”

Maxwell paled. “Oh no…”

Constance spoke up. “Is she alright? What happened to her?”

“I have received word that she is safe and unharmed. However, it is unlikely that you will see her again. I cannot answer more fully in this place. Come.”

He gestured back down the hill, where two black sedans waited outside the gates to the park, headlights blazing in the night. 

“What about the… the old man and...” Sam stuttered, unable to finish the sentence. 

“They are being pursued.”

Irving ran his fingers through his hair. He was so tired. And the promise of answers was too tempting to resist. “Alright. Let’s see what ye have to say.”

Contra nodded, the leather of his jacket squeaking as he folded his arms. 

“Right answer.” He smiled. “You know how to make a bloody entrance, mates, I’ll give you that!” 


End file.
